THE BLAMELESS DEAD
GARY HAYNES
© Gary Haynes 2019
Gary Haynes has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2019 by Endeavour Quill Ltd.
‘Only the dead have seen the end of war.’
George Santayana
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
‘At this hour
Lie at my mercy all mine enemies.’
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
CHAPTER TWO
Berlin, late April, 1945.
Pavel used his binoculars to watch the Kid sprint over the collapsed entry gates. He nodded to himself when he registered the young eyes scouring the chosen route for a trip wire, or signs of a landmine, as he’d taught him to do. The Kid stumbled. But after manoeuvring around hillocks of mud and fetid pools of unknowable depth, he reached the bunker’s opening. It had taken him nine seconds.
The others waited for the all-clear: arms held sideways at shoulder level and flapped. Seeing it, they followed the Kid’s path towards the ruptured steel doors, felled by mortar shells, at the front of the bunker. They couldn’t be seen by the Waffen-SS platoon now, and Pavel felt sure they’d make it.
There was a Volkswagen Kübelwagen, a bucket-seat car, on the remains of the driveway that linked the bunker to the street. The tyres were flayed, the bodywork peppered with holes such that it resembled a giant slab of Swiss cheese. Pavel guessed it had been strafed earlier in the day, probably by an Ilyushin Il-2, a Soviet ground-attack aircraft known as the flying tank. Running past the vehicle, he noticed that the occupants, a couple of Luftwaffe officers, had been hit by hundreds of rounds. They had no faces left.
His men kneeled, or bent over, catching their breath after reaching the bunker’s reinforced doorway. Pavel untied the sodden tourniquet from the farmer’s injured arm. He took a fresh field bandage from his canvas backpack and secured it tightly around the bloodied upper limb. The farmer nodded in appreciation.
The doorway was about twenty feet square. The floor was wet in parts, with a mixture of blood and rainwater. The walls, as thick as the armour on their T-34 tanks, had had large chunks blown out of them. At the rear, a concrete stairwell dropped into blackness.
It smelled of paraffin, an underlying rankness, and what Pavel considered was a whiff of incense too. He did his best to ignore it.
‘Move down now,’ he said. He watched his men turn around and face the stairwell. They began to shuffle forward. ‘Wait for me at the bottom.’
‘We should hang them when it’s over,’ the Muscovite said, as he descended the first couple of steps. ‘Every fucking one. Or let the NKVD loose on them,’ he went on, referring to the brutal Soviet secret police.
He was a squat man, with a broad face. Eyes like black diamonds.
‘Even the young ones?’ said Doc. He had a fragile-looking frame and shrew-like features. His hair was always a little too long and he scrubbed his fingernails vigorously every morning. ‘They’re victims too.’
The Muscovite snorted, spat on the ground. ‘They’ll just grow.’
‘You’re a cretin.’ Doc shook his head.
‘What you think, sergeant?’ the Kid said.
‘Get your arse down those steps.’
Doc was an educated man, Pavel knew, a teacher of classical music. He thought the war must have been even worse for a man like him. What he’d said was right too.
He squatted down just inside the sheltered doorway, covering the retreat of his men to a safe distance down the dark staircase. He’d check the bunker was clear. If it was, they’d rest for the night. He rubbed the stubble on his face with his thumb and forefinger, adjusted the strap of his steel helmet, and surveyed the skeleton of a Gothic church to his right. The blown-out windows looked to him like empty eye sockets. He’d seen too many of those. He was seeing them now, even when they weren’t there, he thought.
Below it, a middle-aged man in a crumpled brown suit had been strung up from a lamppost, a wooden sign attached to string around his neck. A fate that seemed common for Berliners. He’d seen their grotesque bodies hanging from grey-coloured trees, from protruding iron bars. Even from the roofs of crashed trucks. Traitors. Deserters. The innocent. Murdered by the Feldgendarmerie, the German military police, and packs of their own people. The fanatical, even now, Pavel thought. The man reminded him of an effigy.
He’d not heard any commotion after his men had started down the concrete steps. The nearby flak guns and tank fire seemed to have ceased too. There was still just the faint rumble of Soviet artillery, the odd crackle of small-arms fire in the distance.
Now he saw them, about forty yards away, as they came around the old wall. He raised his binoculars. But the platoon of Waffen-SS crossed the street and disappeared into one of the many alleyways that led into it. Putting his binoculars into their pouch, he decided to wait for another five minutes. Just to be sure.
He craved sleep. His body ached in every joint. He let himself relax, his head bowing. His eyelids fluttered. He tried his best to stop them from closing, but it was a futile exertion.
Pavel’s eyelids flicked open, startled by sudden movement, something he’d thought had sounded like the scrambling of heavy-duty boots over shale. Intuitively, he swivelled around. He saw a grey shape running towards him. The right arm was pulled back. He knew that meant a stick grenade. In the confined space of the bunker’s entrance and stairwell, the consequences would be devastating. Briefly, he pictured the blood and flesh of his comrades, his charges, splattered up the bare walls. Something he’d avoid at any cost.
Still squatting, he let off a burst from his Shpagin. He held the drum magazine with his left hand, as he pushed it up in an arc. The muzzle smoke spread out and the brass casings somersaulted vertically before clattering onto the concrete about him. The discordant music of war. Of death. The rounds hit the shape in a crescent from waist to shoulder. It was flung back onto the rim of a bomb crater, filled with rancid water. It didn’t move again. Pavel knew he must have looked like an easy target.
The grenade, with its long wooden handle, exploded with nothing more than what he regarded as an exaggerated phut, something he put down to his familiarity with the near deafening discharge of close by artillery and tank fire. But it threw up chunks of aggregate in a white-grey smokeball, the shockwave making the body lift off the ground. It blew off what looked like an arm, or a thigh.
Hearing his men running up the steps behind him, he said, ‘Get back. I’m alright.’
He took out his binoculars. He saw the tattered field grey uniform. The dead German girl was about fifteen years old, her lower thigh looking as if it had been gorged upon by one of the packs of now wild dogs that roamed about the city. But he remained unmoved. Besides, he thought she might be better off dead.
The Red Army liked to rape at night, after they got drunk on pilfered schnapps, or antifreeze from jeeps when alcohol wasn’t on hand. Girls as young as eight. Stooped crones. It didn’t seem to matter. The hopeful took to smearing soot onto their faces and teeth and cutting their hair or tying grimy rags into it. The hopeless jumped off buildings or into swirling rivers. They took their young with them too, wrapped like bundles of bread against their empty breasts. It sickened him. But he guessed all wars sent people spiralling into madness.
Deciding the street wasn’t a good place to be for either side, he took point after re-joining his men. He told himself it was only right he took his turn, although he hated point duty as much as they did. He knew he shouldn’t. It was perilous, and they deserved a sound leader, but he did it anyway.
The passageway took a sharp left at the foot of the concrete steps. It proceeded in the form of a long corridor, which he reckoned passed under the street and on towards the half demolished civic office building. All but a very few lights, affixed to the walls in wire cradles, were broken. The way ahead appeared narrow and ominous. The floor was cracked, damp and slippery. Water leaked from exposed overhead pipes and spilled patches of oil were prevalent.
He knew explosions had happened further on. The air stank of stale smoke and acrid sulphur. He told his men to be careful, to watch out for the sand buckets, fallen plaster and wooden benches. There were scattered documents too. He stooped and picked one up and held it a few inches from his squinting eyes. He risked igniting a match against the wall. He just about made out the outline of the same unknown design on the paper as had been on those few pieces he’d seen in the street. These looked as if they’d been dropped in a chaotic retreat. He blew out the match.
With almost no visibility, it was impossible to tell how far the corridor receded. And there were other corridors now, branching off the main one. It appeared to be a complex underground facility. But he decided not to allow his men to use their torches. Not until he was sure they were alone.
Turning to them, he said, ‘We’ll make sure it’s clear. Share what food we have and what we can find. Then rest for the night.’
A few nodded. The rest just looked bleak.
If it’s clear, we’ll get up at dawn, he thought. Make our way back to company HQ. Get fresh orders.
He got about thirty feet before seeing a steel door, a couple of yards away. Black liquid that looked like stale blood or oil had oozed out from underneath it. He halted his men with a raised arm. He pointed to the Kid, circled his hand over his head and thrust it down: To me. The Kid came forward, his sunken face full of belief. The Kid nodded to him.
Squatting to one side of the door, Pavel pulled down on the metal handle, checking to see if it was locked. He couldn’t risk lobbing in a grenade. The bunker’s damaged ceilings appeared too fragile. The door was unfettered. He kicked it open, rushed in, followed by the Kid.
Inside, he grimaced, moved his Shpagin around in a semicircle, although the dark was almost impenetrable. The stench was even more revolting than in the street. Rank and overwhelming. He held his throat, choking on it. The Kid almost vomited too. There were bundles on the floor, but he couldn’t make them out, and there was something smouldering at the room’s centre.
‘It’s clear,’ Pavel said. He coughed, spat.
He watched the others shuffle into the large, square room, which was devoid of furniture, of any means of artificial light. They covered their noses and mouths with the sleeves of their jackets or blouses, before hastily replacing them with dirty handkerchiefs and strips of bandages snatched out from their pockets.
‘It stinks like a fucking slaughterhouse,’ the Muscovite said.
It does, Pavel thought. But what the hell’s been slaughtered?
GARY HAYNES
© Gary Haynes 2019
Gary Haynes has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2019 by Endeavour Quill Ltd.
‘Only the dead have seen the end of war.’
George Santayana
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
‘At this hour
Lie at my mercy all mine enemies.’
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
CHAPTER TWO
Berlin, late April, 1945.
Pavel used his binoculars to watch the Kid sprint over the collapsed entry gates. He nodded to himself when he registered the young eyes scouring the chosen route for a trip wire, or signs of a landmine, as he’d taught him to do. The Kid stumbled. But after manoeuvring around hillocks of mud and fetid pools of unknowable depth, he reached the bunker’s opening. It had taken him nine seconds.
The others waited for the all-clear: arms held sideways at shoulder level and flapped. Seeing it, they followed the Kid’s path towards the ruptured steel doors, felled by mortar shells, at the front of the bunker. They couldn’t be seen by the Waffen-SS platoon now, and Pavel felt sure they’d make it.
There was a Volkswagen Kübelwagen, a bucket-seat car, on the remains of the driveway that linked the bunker to the street. The tyres were flayed, the bodywork peppered with holes such that it resembled a giant slab of Swiss cheese. Pavel guessed it had been strafed earlier in the day, probably by an Ilyushin Il-2, a Soviet ground-attack aircraft known as the flying tank. Running past the vehicle, he noticed that the occupants, a couple of Luftwaffe officers, had been hit by hundreds of rounds. They had no faces left.
His men kneeled, or bent over, catching their breath after reaching the bunker’s reinforced doorway. Pavel untied the sodden tourniquet from the farmer’s injured arm. He took a fresh field bandage from his canvas backpack and secured it tightly around the bloodied upper limb. The farmer nodded in appreciation.
The doorway was about twenty feet square. The floor was wet in parts, with a mixture of blood and rainwater. The walls, as thick as the armour on their T-34 tanks, had had large chunks blown out of them. At the rear, a concrete stairwell dropped into blackness.
It smelled of paraffin, an underlying rankness, and what Pavel considered was a whiff of incense too. He did his best to ignore it.
‘Move down now,’ he said. He watched his men turn around and face the stairwell. They began to shuffle forward. ‘Wait for me at the bottom.’
‘We should hang them when it’s over,’ the Muscovite said, as he descended the first couple of steps. ‘Every fucking one. Or let the NKVD loose on them,’ he went on, referring to the brutal Soviet secret police.
He was a squat man, with a broad face. Eyes like black diamonds.
‘Even the young ones?’ said Doc. He had a fragile-looking frame and shrew-like features. His hair was always a little too long and he scrubbed his fingernails vigorously every morning. ‘They’re victims too.’
The Muscovite snorted, spat on the ground. ‘They’ll just grow.’
‘You’re a cretin.’ Doc shook his head.
‘What you think, sergeant?’ the Kid said.
‘Get your arse down those steps.’
Doc was an educated man, Pavel knew, a teacher of classical music. He thought the war must have been even worse for a man like him. What he’d said was right too.
He squatted down just inside the sheltered doorway, covering the retreat of his men to a safe distance down the dark staircase. He’d check the bunker was clear. If it was, they’d rest for the night. He rubbed the stubble on his face with his thumb and forefinger, adjusted the strap of his steel helmet, and surveyed the skeleton of a Gothic church to his right. The blown-out windows looked to him like empty eye sockets. He’d seen too many of those. He was seeing them now, even when they weren’t there, he thought.
Below it, a middle-aged man in a crumpled brown suit had been strung up from a lamppost, a wooden sign attached to string around his neck. A fate that seemed common for Berliners. He’d seen their grotesque bodies hanging from grey-coloured trees, from protruding iron bars. Even from the roofs of crashed trucks. Traitors. Deserters. The innocent. Murdered by the Feldgendarmerie, the German military police, and packs of their own people. The fanatical, even now, Pavel thought. The man reminded him of an effigy.
He’d not heard any commotion after his men had started down the concrete steps. The nearby flak guns and tank fire seemed to have ceased too. There was still just the faint rumble of Soviet artillery, the odd crackle of small-arms fire in the distance.
Now he saw them, about forty yards away, as they came around the old wall. He raised his binoculars. But the platoon of Waffen-SS crossed the street and disappeared into one of the many alleyways that led into it. Putting his binoculars into their pouch, he decided to wait for another five minutes. Just to be sure.
He craved sleep. His body ached in every joint. He let himself relax, his head bowing. His eyelids fluttered. He tried his best to stop them from closing, but it was a futile exertion.
Pavel’s eyelids flicked open, startled by sudden movement, something he’d thought had sounded like the scrambling of heavy-duty boots over shale. Intuitively, he swivelled around. He saw a grey shape running towards him. The right arm was pulled back. He knew that meant a stick grenade. In the confined space of the bunker’s entrance and stairwell, the consequences would be devastating. Briefly, he pictured the blood and flesh of his comrades, his charges, splattered up the bare walls. Something he’d avoid at any cost.
Still squatting, he let off a burst from his Shpagin. He held the drum magazine with his left hand, as he pushed it up in an arc. The muzzle smoke spread out and the brass casings somersaulted vertically before clattering onto the concrete about him. The discordant music of war. Of death. The rounds hit the shape in a crescent from waist to shoulder. It was flung back onto the rim of a bomb crater, filled with rancid water. It didn’t move again. Pavel knew he must have looked like an easy target.
The grenade, with its long wooden handle, exploded with nothing more than what he regarded as an exaggerated phut, something he put down to his familiarity with the near deafening discharge of close by artillery and tank fire. But it threw up chunks of aggregate in a white-grey smokeball, the shockwave making the body lift off the ground. It blew off what looked like an arm, or a thigh.
Hearing his men running up the steps behind him, he said, ‘Get back. I’m alright.’
He took out his binoculars. He saw the tattered field grey uniform. The dead German girl was about fifteen years old, her lower thigh looking as if it had been gorged upon by one of the packs of now wild dogs that roamed about the city. But he remained unmoved. Besides, he thought she might be better off dead.
The Red Army liked to rape at night, after they got drunk on pilfered schnapps, or antifreeze from jeeps when alcohol wasn’t on hand. Girls as young as eight. Stooped crones. It didn’t seem to matter. The hopeful took to smearing soot onto their faces and teeth and cutting their hair or tying grimy rags into it. The hopeless jumped off buildings or into swirling rivers. They took their young with them too, wrapped like bundles of bread against their empty breasts. It sickened him. But he guessed all wars sent people spiralling into madness.
Deciding the street wasn’t a good place to be for either side, he took point after re-joining his men. He told himself it was only right he took his turn, although he hated point duty as much as they did. He knew he shouldn’t. It was perilous, and they deserved a sound leader, but he did it anyway.
The passageway took a sharp left at the foot of the concrete steps. It proceeded in the form of a long corridor, which he reckoned passed under the street and on towards the half demolished civic office building. All but a very few lights, affixed to the walls in wire cradles, were broken. The way ahead appeared narrow and ominous. The floor was cracked, damp and slippery. Water leaked from exposed overhead pipes and spilled patches of oil were prevalent.
He knew explosions had happened further on. The air stank of stale smoke and acrid sulphur. He told his men to be careful, to watch out for the sand buckets, fallen plaster and wooden benches. There were scattered documents too. He stooped and picked one up and held it a few inches from his squinting eyes. He risked igniting a match against the wall. He just about made out the outline of the same unknown design on the paper as had been on those few pieces he’d seen in the street. These looked as if they’d been dropped in a chaotic retreat. He blew out the match.
With almost no visibility, it was impossible to tell how far the corridor receded. And there were other corridors now, branching off the main one. It appeared to be a complex underground facility. But he decided not to allow his men to use their torches. Not until he was sure they were alone.
Turning to them, he said, ‘We’ll make sure it’s clear. Share what food we have and what we can find. Then rest for the night.’
A few nodded. The rest just looked bleak.
If it’s clear, we’ll get up at dawn, he thought. Make our way back to company HQ. Get fresh orders.
He got about thirty feet before seeing a steel door, a couple of yards away. Black liquid that looked like stale blood or oil had oozed out from underneath it. He halted his men with a raised arm. He pointed to the Kid, circled his hand over his head and thrust it down: To me. The Kid came forward, his sunken face full of belief. The Kid nodded to him.
Squatting to one side of the door, Pavel pulled down on the metal handle, checking to see if it was locked. He couldn’t risk lobbing in a grenade. The bunker’s damaged ceilings appeared too fragile. The door was unfettered. He kicked it open, rushed in, followed by the Kid.
Inside, he grimaced, moved his Shpagin around in a semicircle, although the dark was almost impenetrable. The stench was even more revolting than in the street. Rank and overwhelming. He held his throat, choking on it. The Kid almost vomited too. There were bundles on the floor, but he couldn’t make them out, and there was something smouldering at the room’s centre.
‘It’s clear,’ Pavel said. He coughed, spat.
He watched the others shuffle into the large, square room, which was devoid of furniture, of any means of artificial light. They covered their noses and mouths with the sleeves of their jackets or blouses, before hastily replacing them with dirty handkerchiefs and strips of bandages snatched out from their pockets.
‘It stinks like a fucking slaughterhouse,’ the Muscovite said.
It does, Pavel thought. But what the hell’s been slaughtered?