Two Brothers

Recognized Calais, 1940

PAULUS HAD BEEN expecting it.

Every day since he had enlisted he had been on his guard. Certainly he was buried deep, the Nazi military machine was vast, there were millions of Germans now in uniform, and of course that uniform was the very last one anyone might expect the man they had known as Paulus Stengel to be wearing. Nonetheless, amongst those millions were some who would know him, whatever he wore. And who knew what he really was.

Paulus had been alert to such an encounter since the first day he had swapped identities with his brother, and now that moment had arrived.

He was sitting in a tiny country bistro about five kilometres from Calais, having ridden there on a motorcycle on an evening pass out. He had been in the process of writing a letter to Dagmar when he became aware that he was being observed.

No one called out his name or tried to speak to him but something told him there were eyes upon him. That he was being discussed. Perhaps it was a slight change in the tone of the murmuring that emanated from the only other occupied table in the room. Or else simply that inexplicable thing that people call the sixth sense.

Whatever it was, Paulus knew.

He had not particularly noticed the men coming in and taking their table. He had been too focused on trying to compose his letter. A letter in which he was struggling to give some hint to the woman he loved of the nightmare of being a soldier in Hitler’s armies.

The nightmare of being a member of the Waffen SS. A soldier in the very regiment that bore the Führer’s name: the division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.

The long-awaited military storm in the west had broken on 10 May when the German war machine smashed the Dutch border, swatting aside the feeble defences in an hour. So fast was their progress that at first it had seemed to Paulus as if he might even get away without personally shooting at the enemy.

The Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler reached Rotterdam in two days and The Hague in four, after which the Dutch surrendered and another country and its Jews fell into Nazi clutches. Without pausing for breath, Paulus’s division had then swung on into France.

Paulus confessed in his letter that he had actually found the advance exciting. It was a heady experience to storm across sund-renched countryside in pursuit of a retreating foe.

They had chased the British all the way to Dunkirk and would, in Paulus’s opinion, have captured the whole of the expeditionary force had they been allowed to proceed. This was also the opinion of every soldier in his division, although it was one that had to be expressed carefully as the inevitable conclusion was that the greatest warlord in all history had made a stupid mistake.

It was in the approaches to Dunkirk that Paulus had witnessed an event about which he could not write but which had been on his mind ever since it occurred. The Leibstandarte had just taken the town of Wormhout, a mere ten miles from the beaches of Dunkirk. A lot of prisoners had been captured and Paulus had been present when some men from the 1st Division had rounded up a group of about a hundred Tommies and herded them into a barn. Then instead of making them prisoners of war, as they were required to do under the Geneva Convention, they had thrown grenades into the flimsy structure. The few shattered British who managed to crawl out of the carnage were shot and bayoneted on the ground.

It was this incident that Paulus really wanted to put down in his letter to Dagmar, along with his terrible fears that one day he himself would be called upon to take part in such an outrage. He was prepared to fight for Germany, fate had put him in an impossible position on that score and he felt he had no choice. But he knew that he could not commit cold-blooded murder.

It was while he considered how he might hint at these tortured thoughts in his letter without alerting the censor that he had become aware he was being observed.

They were Wehrmacht. He could see their boots beneath the table opposite without raising his head from the page. Big hobnailed jackboots, dusty and cracked. That made them army; no trooper in the Waffen SS Leibstandarte would have gone out on furlough without first shining his boots.

Paulus resisted the urge to look up. So far he judged they had not had clear sight of him. He knew his head had been partially bowed over the letter he was writing since they had entered the bar.

The exit to the bar, however, lay beyond the table on which the soldiers were sitting, so he could not get out without whoever it was getting a considerably better look at him than the one they were currently enjoying. Paulus therefore had two choices. He could either keep his head bowed and hope they would shrug their suspicions off and leave. Or he could brazen it out and leave at once, walking straight past them.

Paulus counted three sets of boots beneath the table. Not good odds.

The whispering continued.

The feet began to fidget.

It was clear to Paulus that if he waited for them to make a move he would be massively disadvantaged. He needed to take the initiative and time had almost run out. The chair behind one of the sets of boots was being pushed back. One of them had decided to act. To come across and challenge him. Paulus had seconds left to take control. If he waited a moment longer one of three would be in his face with the other two behind.

In a single and sudden movement, Paulus gathered up his letter, slammed some currency on the table and got to his feet. Heading straight for the door he flicked his eyes once to look at the men he feared.

One glance was enough.

The years fell away.

It was Emil Braas. The boy who had tried to turn the old soccer team against Paulus and Otto in the changing hut on their last day with the youth club.

‘Jude! Jude!’ they had chanted to the banging of a stick on a dustbin lid.

Emil Braas, who had been so jealous of them and had tried to take his revenge within a week of Hitler becoming Chancellor. Paulus had thwarted Emil then with a wave of his prick. Turned the crowd round and made the attacker look a fool. Such a trick wouldn’t work again. Paulus had occasionally seen Emil Braas around Friedrichshain during the long years of 1930s, and foreskins or not, everybody knew the Stengel boys were Jews.

And just as in that instant Paulus recognized Emil Braas, he was quite certain that Emil Braas recognized him. Both of course had changed a great deal: no longer fresh-faced boys but battle-hardened men. The eyes, however, didn’t lie.

The game was up.

Certainly Braas was confused. How could he not be? He knew that Paulus Stengel was a Jew. So the fact that his old enemy had turned up in a bistro in occupied France wearing a German military uniform with the dual lightning flash insignia of the SS on it was going to be a shock. But confused or not, Emil Braas knew him.

Although seriously outnumbered, Paulus calculated that for the next few seconds at least he still had the initiative. Braas was confused. He was not. That was a significant advantage if used decisively and Paulus, although never rash, was always decisive.

‘Hello, Emil,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘What’s the matter? Never seen a Jewish SS man before?’

And with that he was out of the door.

Paulus knew that he would have to kill Braas and also the men he was with. What was more he must do it at once before they had the chance to spread their suspicions further or think of calling the military police.

Outside he was relieved to see the dusty road was almost empty. He had chosen to visit that particular bar because of its solitude and isolation, and there were no other Wehrmacht personnel anywhere to be seen. Just an old peasant with a few goats a little further up the dusty track.

Paulus reached a hand into his knapsack.

Not being an officer, his usual weapon was a rifle, but he had left that back at barracks. The French countryside was completely subdued; their leader Marshal Pétain had called for cooperation with Hitler and so German military personnel did not carry their weapons when off duty. However, like many of his comrades, Paulus had picked up a souvenir during the recent fighting. A British officer’s Enfield revolver. Paulus always kept it about him, well oiled and fully loaded for just such an emergency as this.

Pulling it from his bag he ran a few metres up the track and spun around just as the three men crowded through the front door of the tiny bistro in pursuit.

Had the pistol jammed even for an instant Paulus would have been overcome, but British engineering did not let him down. He opened fire immediately, taking the three soldiers absolutely by surprise. The gun was a double-action piece requiring re-cocking for each shot, but Paulus had been well trained in the use of small arms. His left hand flew over the trigger hammer after each shot, just like in a scene from an American western. The pistol blazed and his enemies were left with no time to do more than raise their hands in horror as one after another they took a bullet in the chest and fell. A further three bullets, one fired into each of their heads as they lay twitching in the dust, emptied the chamber and ensured that Paulus’s secret was safe.

Paulus wiped the handle of the gun on his shirt tail, dropped it amongst the dead, mounted his motorcycle and rode off.