Storm Front

Chapter Twenty-One

Berlin, Germany

4 August 1985

My sister is playing a very dangerous game, Leutnant Kurt Wieland thought, as he stepped into the barracks. And who knows what will happen when something goes badly wrong?

It wasn’t a pleasant thought. No one else seemed to have realised that Gudrun was responsible for the leaflets, but Kurt knew all too well that Gudrun had means, motive and opportunity. She might have been a girl, yet she’d been brave enough to sneak into a secure hospital just to visit her boyfriend. Kurt couldn’t have asked for more from the soldiers under his command.

“Leutnant,” Oberfeldwebel Helmut Loeb said. “The CO has called a briefing in ten minutes.”

“And I’m expected to attend,” Kurt said. Loeb was an NCO, old enough to be Kurt’s father; he’d forgotten more about war than Kurt had ever known. “I’ll be there.”

He placed his knapsack in the locker, then hurried down to the briefing room. The ordinary soldiers had an additional two days of leave, while their officers and NCOs received their orders from their superiors and planned how best to carry them out. Kurt had a nasty feeling that the Berlin Guard was going to be deployed away from Berlin for the first time in quite some time, perhaps as a complete unit. Individual companies had been rotated through Germany East, Germany Arabia and Germany South to give their officers and men some valuable experience, but the Berlin Guard as a whole hadn’t left Berlin for years. Their battle honours had been allowed to lapse.

But we weren’t meant to face real trouble in South Africa, Kurt thought. He remembered feeling envious of the soldiers who’d been sent to South Africa. It might not be a proper war, but at least it was some action. Now, if the rumours are accurate, the war in South Africa may blaze on for years with no end in sight.

He pushed the thought aside as he entered the briefing room. It was pleasantly informal while the soldiers were still on leave; the CO was standing in front of a podium while his subordinates were pouring themselves mugs of black coffee and sitting down on hard metal chairs in front of him. A large map of South Africa hung from the wall, suggesting that Gudrun had been right and the Berlin Guard was going to the war. Kurt couldn’t help a flicker of fear and dread as he poured himself coffee and sat down; he knew he was brave, but the thought of ending up like Konrad, his body a mangled wreck, was terrifying. He would sooner die.

And my family might not know what happened to me, he thought, grimly. He wasn’t quite sure how Gudrun had found out where Konrad was, but after the leaflets had started to appear it was unlikely her source would dare tell her anything else. They’d have a sudden end to my letters and nothing.

It was a bitter thought. He prided himself on being faithful – he’d always been faithful, right from the moment he’d first entered the Hitler Youth. He’d enjoyed himself; singing songs, marching in unison and practicing with guns, even as some of the more sensitive souls had found the Hitler Youth a foretaste of hell. And yet, if someone as faithful as Konrad – and an SS officer, no less – could simply be discarded, it could happen to him. How could he be loyal to the Third Reich when it was clear that the Third Reich was not loyal to its fighting men?

Kurt had no illusions. People died on military service; hell, he’d watched in horror as a boy died on the ropes, back in the Hitler Youth. The teenagers had been told that the boy had effectively been an Untermensch, that he’d deserved to die through sheer incompetence; in hindsight, Kurt wondered if it had been wise to force the poor boy to try to climb slippery ropes when his skill at climbing ropes was minimal. But even if the masters had been right, it didn’t justify hiding the dead and wounded and then lying about it. Didn’t Konrad’s family deserve some closure?

I’m sorry, Gudrun, he thought, as the CO tapped the podium for attention. I wish I was there for you.

That too was not a pleasant thought. Kurt would happily have beaten his younger brother to a pulp for daring to make fun of Gudrun’s grief, but he had no idea how to comfort a stricken soul. Gudrun had known Konrad had been badly injured, yet she’d been able to cling to hope until Konrad’s family had formally terminated the engagement. It wouldn’t reflect badly on her, Kurt was sure, but it had still been shattering. And, given what else she was doing, she really didn’t need the stress.

“Our new deployment orders have finally arrived,” the CO said, after the standard Heil Bormann. “The Berlin Guard – all 5000 of us – is going to be deployed to South Africa in the next three months, where we will be reinforcing troops already on the ground. We will commence tactical exercises as soon as the troops report back to barracks, focused around convoy protection, aggressive patrolling and counter-terrorism operations. This is an opportunity for us to be blooded as a unit, rather than as a handful of individual companies.”

And an opportunity to wind up crippled, Kurt thought, sardonically. He wasn’t fool enough to say that out loud. Who knows what will happen if one of us winds up dead or wounded?

He listened, carefully, as the CO ran through the first set of assignments. Moving a military unit from Germany Prime to Germany South would be a logistical nightmare, even though the Kriegsmarine seemed confident it had the shipping to move thousands of troops and their equipment from Berlin to the ports in Africa. After that… it would be worse, he suspected, when he looked at the briefing notes. The news claimed that Germany South was safe, but they wouldn’t have been ordered to prepare to defend their convoys if there wasn’t a risk of being attacked. And afterwards…

The population map made the problem far too clear. South Africa had fifty-seven million people within its borders, a mere five million of whom were white. It looked, very much, as though the South Africans were either refusing to breed or fleeing the country, no matter what their government had to say about it. Even if one counted the relatively small Indian and Chinese populations as white, it was still clear that the white population was staggeringly outnumbered. The CO might insist that one good German was worth ten black men, but Kurt had the uneasy feeling that the blacks could afford to trade ten of their men for one German and still come out ahead. And if there were parts of Russia that were still dangerous, even forty years after the conquest, who knew how long it would take to pacify South Africa?

“This could take a while,” Leutnant Bernhard Schrupp muttered.

Kurt winced inwardly, hoping desperately that the CO hadn’t overheard Schrupp’s rather sarcastic comment. Schrupp wasn’t a bad person, not really, but he had a tendency to grumble and ask pointed questions. Indeed, Kurt had often wondered how Schrupp had managed to win promotion in the first place. As far as he knew, Schrupp didn’t have any relatives in high places.

“A number of officers who have served in South Africa will be arriving at the barracks tomorrow,” the CO concluded. “You will have a chance to learn from their experiences and prepare exercises for the troops. Dismissed.”

Kurt saluted, then rose with the other officers. There were briefing papers to read, then officers to interrogate; he needed to be ready by the time the troops returned to their barracks and readied themselves for war. And yet, there was a gnawing feeling in his chest that all was not right, that going to South Africa might be the last thing he’d ever do. It just didn’t seem right…

We might not be able to win, he thought, taking a long look at the map. How do we crush a rebellion that has over ninety percent of the population on its side?

Schrupp followed him back to the barracks, then into one of the small offices they were allowed to use for their paperwork. “I read the leaflets,” he said, once the door was firmly closed. “We might be going to our deaths.”

“That’s always a risk,” Kurt pointed out, trying hard to keep his face impassive. One day, Schrupp would go too far and wind up hauled off by the SS for interrogation. “We’re not sailors, you know.”

“My brother is a sailor on the Graf Zeppelin,” Schrupp said. “He says that life on the ocean waves can be just as dangerous as life in the Heer.”

Kurt snorted. It was an article of faith among the soldiers – and the Waffen-SS, he suspected – that the Kriegsmarine sailors did nothing more than sit in port, scrub their decks and try to look good in their fancy uniforms. And it might even be true. The sea could be rough – he’d enjoyed sailing with the Hitler Youth, once he’d managed to recover from an unexpected bout of seasickness – but it wasn’t as dangerous as being shot at by insurgents.

“But that isn’t the point,” Schrupp added, after a moment. “What happens to us when we get wounded in South Africa?”

“Good question,” Kurt said. “Why don’t you ask the CO?”

Schrupp gave him a sardonic look. “Do you think he’d give me a straight answer?”

He turned and headed out of the tiny office before Kurt could formulate a response. Kurt watched him go, trying to understand what Schrupp was doing. Grumbling was one thing, but doing something – anything – that could be taken as trying to prepare the ground for a mutiny was quite another. Kurt could report him right away and Schrupp’s career would come to a screeching halt, even if he avoided anything worse than the punishment units in Germany East. It was Kurt’s duty to report him. And yet, betraying Schrupp would ensure that no one ever trusted him again…

Maybe I should just leave him to get on with it, Kurt thought.

But the thought kept nagging at his mind. He’d be leading a platoon into combat in South Africa, with a number of men under his command, men he’d be responsible for. What would happen when one of them died while under his command? Would the dead man’s family be informed or would they just be left in limbo?

He shuddered. Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn’t accompanied Gudrun to the hospital, if he’d reported her to their father as soon as she asked for his help. But he hadn’t and now he had to deal with his own doubts about the Reich.

And we’re leaving for South Africa in three months, he reminded himself. By then, something may change…

Volker Schulze knew, from hard experience, that life could be painful. He’d joined the SS as a young man, gone through a brutal training program that killed a handful of new recruits every year and served as a front-line Waffen-SS soldier for fifteen years before retiring and going to work in a factory. He had no illusions about the world; it was a brutal place and the Third Reich needed brutal men to dominate it. Loyalty had been hammered into him from birth.

And yet, he was angry.

He’d known that Konrad could end up dead or wounded. He had accepted that the moment Konrad insisted on following in his father’s footsteps and applying to join the Waffen-SS; Konrad might die in training, let alone in the field. Volker had accepted that, he told himself, and yet… he’d believed that his loyalty would always be returned. The SS would have told his parents if he had died, he was sure, and they should have told him when his son was brutally wounded, permanently crippled. But they hadn’t. They’d lied to him. And even his contacts within the bureaucracy hadn’t been able to locate his son.

The thought had nagged at his mind ever since he’d discovered the truth. He’d given the best years of his life to the Reich. His son, it seemed, had lost his life for the Reich… and yet, the Reich hadn’t even tried to honour his death. Konrad should have been allowed to die with dignity, his family by his side, his body laid to rest in the ground. Instead, he was trapped on life support, eternally suspended on the brink of death, his hopes and dreams smashed along with his body. And they’d lied to him.

He mulled the feeling over as he made his way slowly into the giant factory complex, nodding to a handful of men he recognised along the way. The giant complex produced vehicles, ranging from the handful of publicly-available cars to lorries and small armoured patrol vehicles for the military. He’d been proud to work in the factory, once upon a time; it had seemed a chance to make use of his experience even though he was no longer a Waffen-SS stormtrooper. Now… now it had all turned to ashes in his mouth.

“Volker,” the secretary said, as he entered the office. “What can I do for you?”

Volker sighed, inwardly. The secretary had never served. He’d gone straight into the corporate sphere as soon as he’d graduated from school, instead of volunteering for active service. Volker had always disliked him, but now… now he wished Konrad had chosen to do something – anything – else to prove he was a man. At least he’d still be alive.

“I want you to arrange a meeting of everyone who has a relative in the military,” he said. The secretary would have no trouble putting together a list, just by consulting the files. “Have them assemble in the cafeteria after the next shift.”

The secretary frowned. “I could only ask the workers on the current shift,” he said, after a moment. “Unless you wanted to put it off for a couple of days, so that everyone could be informed.”

“Just inform as many as you can,” Volker said. “I intend to find a way to honour our serving men.”

He turned and strode out, confident his orders would be obeyed. The secretary wouldn’t defy him on such a minor matter, even though he’d probably report the meeting to higher management. He doubted his superiors would care, as long as he wasn’t pulling workers away from their duties. Besides, corporate events honouring the troops were popular and suggested the corporation cared about the fighting men.

Not that they do, Volker thought. He still shuddered at the thought of having to ride in one of the new jeeps a corporation had produced for the soldiers. They’d been so unprotected that a lunatic with a single pistol could do real damage. All they care about is money.

The thought was a distraction, so he turned it over and over in his mind as the whistle blew and he went to work. They’d been working longer hours recently, turning out fewer civilian cars and more military vehicles; reading between the lines, he had a private suspicion that meant that the losses in South Africa were far higher than expected. Panzers would probably make short work of the insurgents, if the insurgents were fool enough to stand and fight. The Arabs had tried that in their rebellion and it had ended very badly, for them.

He wasn’t sure how many workers would turn up for his meeting, but when he entered the cafeteria he was relieved to discover that over fifty workers had attended. Chances were that some of them had thought attendance was compulsory – the secretary had probably made it so – and weren’t too keen on anything other than getting home to their wives and children, but the meeting wouldn’t take long. He strode over to the jukebox, turned on a recording of one of Wagner’s longer compositions – the only music they were allowed in the factory – and turned to face his audience. Thankfully, he knew most of them personally.

And some of them have been grumbling over the increased hours, he thought. And about how little say we have in our own affairs.

It was a risk, he admitted privately; he could be sacked on the spot for trying to form a non-governmental union, let alone discussing what had happened to Konrad. His bosses might be pleased with his work, but they wouldn’t tolerate anything that smacked of worker power. It would threaten their grip on power…

“I’m sorry for asking you all to attend,” he said, curtly. Liana was too young to understand what was happening, but he had discussed his plans with Gerde and she’d agreed that they had to take the risk. “There is a matter I need to discuss with you.”

He took a breath, then pulled one of the leaflets out of his pocket and held it up. “This is true,” he said. “My son is one of the wounded. My son was shipped back home to a hospital somewhere in Germany – and they never told me what happened to him. Now, I find out through my own contacts that he will probably never recover. There is nothing I can do.”

A low rumble of anger ran through the cafeteria. Volker might have been an SS officer, once upon a time, but he was a popular and reasonable foreman who’d gone to bat for his subordinates more than once. None of his workers believed he deserved to lose a son…

“It gets worse,” Volker added, once several workers had added their own stories. “The demands on our time are likely to increase.”

He braced himself as he took the plunge. “I think it’s time to take our fate into our own hands.”