The Excalibur Codex

The second part of my story opens on the Oder front, in mid April 1945, south of the village of Seelow. I had recently been promoted to the rank of SS-Unterscharführer and transferred from Third SS Totenkopf Division to command a company of Hitler Jugend holding a strategic crossroads near Dolgelin. My unit consisted of eighty-four boys aged between fourteen and sixteen and armed with Panzerfaust anti-tank rockets and First World War rifles they barely had the strength to carry. Facing us were veterans of Katukov’s First Guards Tank Army and Chuikov’s Eighth Guards Army who had fought their way to the Oder from Stalingrad, via Kursk and the Vistula. We were dug in with other units on the height overlooking the river, defending Reichstrasse One, which stretched away behind us like a dagger into the very heart of Berlin. By now I was worn thin by war and death and constant terror; when I looked in the mirror I saw the face of a decaying corpse, eyes sunk into dark pits and bones fighting to free themselves from the flesh. My heart was no longer my own. My soul, if it had ever existed, was buried somewhere out on the Russian steppe with the bodies of a thousand kameraden. I had seen things and done things that would haunt me for ever. More important, perhaps, I no longer believed, but to even think it was to risk a bullet from the chain dogs of the Feldgendarmerie. Tomorrow would be my twenty-fourth birthday.

On the night of 15 April I inspected our position and whispered words of encouragement to my ‘men’. The boys stared at me from beneath over-large helmets that wobbled on their heads, wrapped in greatcoats that enveloped their thin bodies. Their frightened eyes seemed too big for faces pinched and narrow from constant hunger. More than half were orphans, or believed they were; their parents casualties of one front or another, or buried in the rubble of bombed-out homes in Berlin. They had known nothing but war, or the preparations for war, so that this, lying in the damp earth at the very heart of Dante’s inferno, with the smell of roasted flesh in their nostrils and the star shells lighting up the sky all around, could be reckoned normal. As I went I passed out boiled sweets, and they smiled shyly as they accepted them, like children at a school prize-giving.

‘When will they come?’ It was a lad called Werner, one of the youngest, but eager to prove himself; still bright-eyed and unknowing.

‘Soon enough.’ I managed a grin. ‘Get some sleep, junge!’ I hoped that, in their innocence, they would all sleep well, for tomorrow we would die.

The bombardment began before dawn, the shells from a thousand artillery pieces marching across the flood plain and up the hill like an unstoppable army; an inferno of fire and steel that struck terror into every man who endured it. Horrified, we watched the monster approach, devouring everything in its path, hurling trees and houses and men into the air, where they hung or disintegrated as was the beast’s pleasure, dropping back to bury the dead and wounded alike.

‘Down,’ I screamed. ‘Get in the bottom of your holes and stay there.’

The ground shook as if it were a living thing and the beast closed on us with the wind of its coming gusting across the top of our pits and trenches like the precursor of a storm. I tried to make myself part of the earth, but no matter how hard I dug it rejected my living flesh. An instant later we were at the centre of an apocalypse of heat and light and noise, the air torn from our lungs and our ear drums bursting with the hellish percussion of the devil’s orchestra of shells and rockets.

As quickly as it had arrived, it was gone, and in the relative silence the only sound was of sobbing, and the distant screams of someone who had only seconds to live.

‘Please, sir,’ the shrill voice seemed unnaturally loud, ‘I think Werner’s hurt.’

He lay on his back, his dark eyes like bruises against the marble white of his flesh. He was still alive and when I placed a sweet between his lips they turned up in a smile that he would wear for ever. The boy in the next rifle pit had been wounded and Werner had run to his aid like a brave little Hitler Jugend. He was fortunate. He never even felt the enormous shell splinter that cut him in half at the waist.

The sound of the barrage subsided into the distance, replaced by the rumble of engines and the sharp cry of whistles, punctuated by incessant bursts of heavy machine-gun and rifle fire.

‘Tanks!’ The warning was unnecessary because as the smoke lifted we could see them crossing the flood plain below like a plague of giant beetles, swarms of brown-clad tommy-gunners running among them, urged on by their political commissars. Occasionally, one of the machines would turn into a bright match-head of flame as a faust or a shell hit its mark, and the little figures around it would shrivel up or drop to the ground. The engine note changed to a deep growl as the machines hit the steep slope of the Seelow Heights and began the climb towards us. I called out to check the position of the faust teams and gripped the MG-42 more tightly. Manfred, my loader, a fifteen-year-old baker’s son from Bielefeld, crouched beside me, his face serious and determined, eyes narrowed behind thick, round spectacles.

‘Steady,’ I called. ‘Wait until they’re right on top of us.’

The firing came closer and fleeing men began to spill back towards us over the brow of the hills.

‘Hold your fire, they’re ours.’

‘Cowards!’ A high-pitched voice called from the far end of the line.

‘Shut up!’ Where was our artillery? Of course, the slope wouldn’t allow them to see their targets yet.

A man staggered into sight, using his rifle as a crutch. He was making for the sanctuary of one of the front trenches and the men occupying them shouted encouragement. At first, it seemed he would make it, but without warning a massive shape mounted the crest and bore down on the fleeing soldier. He looked back and desperately tried to speed up, but the T-34 kept pace with him like a cat playing with a mouse. The game went on for a few moments before the commander became bored, the tank accelerated and with a terrible shriek the landser went down under the tracks to be crushed flat by the twenty-six-tonne monster.

His terrible death brought a retaliatory fusillade of fire from the front trenches. The infantry around the tanks went down as if a scythe had cut the feet from under them, but the tank, now accompanied by three more, came on, undeterred even by a Panzerfaust strike. When the machines reached the trenches a few men ran, to be chopped down in their turn by the T-34’s machine guns. We were trained to stay in our trenches. Every two men were issued with a magnetic anti-tank mine. Once the tank passed over the trench you emerged to clamp the mine to the weaker armour at the rear and blow the beast to kingdom come. Of course, the covering infantry were likely to kill you before you had the chance to celebrate your victory, but the sacrifice would be deemed worthwhile. But these Russian tankers knew their business and I heard my boys gasp as the T-34s settled over the trench before dancing on their axis, crushing everything below them to a pulp.

‘Steady.’

Somewhere along the line a quiet voice was praying, a practice not encouraged in the Hitler Jugend. For once no one seemed to care.

I clamped my teeth shut to stop them chattering. Our turn. Somewhere, someone was growling like a dog and it wasn’t until I saw Manfred’s look of puzzlement that I realized it was me. I had fought tanks before, but familiarity made it no easier on the nerves or the bowels. They seemed to grow before the eyes as they advanced over the rough ground. Machine-gun fire sprayed across the top of the trench and I heard a frightened yelp from not far away.

‘Keep your fucking heads down. Steady. Faust teams one and two take the tank on the left. Three and four, the one in the centre.’

Fifty paces. The infantry had returned, thick as wasps around rotting fruit and seeking out targets with their tommy guns. I aimed at a group to the left of the centre tank. The MG-42 bucked in my hands, spewing out twenty rounds a second in a series of short buzz-saw rasps and, as the men fell, the MG was joined by the crack of rifles and the familiar raw thump of the Fausts. I looked up expecting to see the tanks burning, but they kept coming on and it was only then I noticed the spring mattresses tied to their fronts and sides; a crude but effective protection against our single-shot rockets.

Shit. ‘Aim for the tracks,’ I screamed, but I knew it was too late. In horror I watched the rifle pits ahead of me obliterated. I tried spraying the driver’s eye slits, but knew I had as much chance of stopping them as I had of surviving the war. I exchanged a desperate glance with Manfred. Should we take our chances in the open? Anything was better than being turned into mincemeat by those tracks. I was reaching for the rear of the trench when an incredible flat crack tore the air above my head, followed instantly by the enormous clang of a giant bell being struck. The next time I looked, black smoke was boiling from the tank and the first crewman was struggling to escape from the turret.

‘Kill the bastards.’ Bullets shredded the tanker and whether the remaining Ivan was too injured or too terrified to emerge, we heard his screams as he burned alive inside. As my head cleared I became aware of more T-34s being hit as our 88mm guns finally found their range. We continued firing until the last of the infantry disappeared or were lying dead on the ground.

A single wounded Russian rose from the prone figures, calling out, ‘Kamerad. Stalin kaput.’ I nodded to Manfred and the boy raised his rifle, frowned with concentration and shot the Ivan through the body. The soldier collapsed, groaning and clawing at his guts. Manfred walked over to him and pointed the barrel at his head. I pushed the rifle aside. ‘He’s finished. Don’t waste a bullet. You should have done it properly the first time.’

I checked our casualties as an SS runner came up with orders to hand over the trenches to his company and regroup on Reichstrasse One. Despite our success in holding the centre, it seemed the Ivans had broken through to the south. We had no time to bury the dead. The enemy would undoubtedly be preparing for the next attack. Already the shells were beginning to fall, targeting the artillery positions to our rear. I could hear the terrifying shriek of the Stalin Organs, Katyusha multiple rocket launchers, and to the south the enormous hammer blow of a strike seemed to chew up an acre of ground, destroying everything within.

I formed up the exhausted boys, some of them snivelling at the loss of comrades, and marched them through the reinforcing SS men. They stared as we passed and the contrast between the jackbooted veterans weighed down with grenades, knives and machine pistols and the kids in their over-sized helmets and uniforms seemed almost surreal. One of them sneered and I felt like punching his yellow teeth down his throat. We had stood. We would see if they did.

We had marched a hundred metres before I heard an inhuman howl and the whole world turned red.

When I woke, it was in a charnel house with the smell of torn bowels filling my nostrils and the ground all round strewn with gobbets of torn flesh and larger pieces recognizable as limbs and torsos. A lance of pain speared my left leg and my mind reeled as I felt my body for the terrible injury I knew I must have suffered, but the leg was still there, only broken. Shouting for a medic, I looked around for help, only to find myself staring into a familiar face with sightless eyes already turning opaque. Manfred: I wondered idly what had happened to the rest of him. A few shell-shocked survivors wept among the remains of their comrades. Two of them helped me to the rear where a doctor checked me over before two orderlies threw me unceremoniously into the back of an ambulance.

As we drove off, someone shoved a canteen in my hand and I guzzled down the contents, not realizing how thirsty I had been and still trying to come to terms with my good fortune. I had survived again.

‘You might need that later, soldier.’

When I looked up, two startling blue eyes studied me from the other side of the ambulance and I froze beneath their gaze. They belonged to an SS-Gruppenführer, a general no less, and even more surprisingly one prepared to share his transport with a Schutztruppen like me. He had his right arm in a sling and the blood from a shoulder wound seeped through his bandages. His face was pale, but he was still alert enough, for he said: ‘Don’t I know you?’

He would be in his mid twenties then, barely a couple of years older than I; a handsome man, with strong intelligent features and dark hair swept back from a broad forehead. Since I had seen him last all those years ago, he had clawed his way to the highest echelons of the party, using the bodies of his rivals as hand- and footholds as he rose to Hitler’s inner circle.

‘The sword,’ he whispered. ‘You gave me the sword.’ Then he fell back and closed his eyes.

When I next woke, I found him watching me and drinking from a brown glass bottle, which he immediately offered. I reached across, wincing at the pain in my leg, and took a swig, choking as the raw heat of the brandy scoured my throat and exploded in my chest.

‘Good stuff, eh?’ He grinned, the brightness of his eyes and the slurring in his voice testament to the inroads he had made into the bottle. I nodded and handed it back, eyeing him warily. He studied the Iron Cross on my breast. ‘You’ve seen some hard fighting, I’d guess? Where did you serve?’

I shrugged. ‘Poland. France. The Ostfront; Kiev, Kharkov, Tula, all the way to the gates of Moscow.’

‘And back.’ He grinned again.

‘We would have won if the Wehrmacht had fought as hard as the SS,’ I said defensively.

The lorry lurched and I felt the bones grinding together in my thigh. Everything turned hazy, but before I lapsed into unconsciousness I was sure I heard him whisper: ‘We should have won.’

Some time later a hand shook my shoulder and I discovered that we had been evacuated from the ambulance to a clearing by the side of the road.

‘Jabos,’ my Gruppenführer explained. ‘Sturmovik ground-attack fighters.’ From somewhere he had found another bottle and he drank freely from it as we lay together, he propped against a tree and I on my back with my leg in a splint. He was beyond drunk now, on some euphoric plane where blood loss and alcohol had taken him out of reach of the pain from his shattered arm. He spoke in a hoarse whisper, but every word pierced my brain like the point of an SS dagger. ‘You deserve to know. You of all people deserve to know. The man who made it possible.’

The treasure I had brought back from Britain, he said, had been taken first to a sacred place where it had been joined with other such treasures. Each was a thing of power, and it was believed that, together, they could call on a great force for good. They had been gathered on the direct orders of the Reichsführer for a ceremony his advisers assured him would change the world. Himmler’s was the vision, but it was Heydrich who had tracked them down, one by one.

Yet the time and the place must be right. The Reichsführer had argued for their immediate use, here, in this holy of holies he had created, but the High Priests of the Ahnenerbe cautioned otherwise. When Poland capitulated, the treasures had been taken east, because it was from the east that history tells us the greatest threat will come. There, in April 1941, in a place not far from where the Führer charted the course of the Thousand Year Reich, an ancient rite would be re-enacted and the spirit of Europe’s greatest warriors would emerge to aid the righteous in their battle against the forces of darkness.

He grabbed my arm. ‘I was there, you know. I felt its power. The cloaked and masked figures. The words from the book. Beneath the Knight’s Cross, one round table, five swords formed in the shape of a pentagram, twelve Knights of the Black Order — and one other element of which I will not speak. Joyeuse, the sword of Charlemagne; Durendal, the sword of Roland; Gotteswerkzeug, the sword of Werner von Orseln, defier of the Eastern hordes; Zerstorer, the sword of Barbarossa; and your sword, the gift of the Lady in the Lake, the sword of Arthur: Excalibur.’