“Thanks.”
The pilot grinned, taking the cigarette with shaking fingers.
Erich opened his canteen, gulped some rum, then wiped the canteen on his sleeve and offered it to the pilot. “Here, tovarich… Drink good SS vodka.”
Realizing that his life was not in danger the Russian relaxed.
“Our commander says that you don’t want to surrender,” he said, shifting his eyes from face to face as though seeking our approval for what he was saying. “You must surrender… There are two divisions in the valley; forty tanks and heavy artillery are expected to come in a day or two.”
“Tovarich, you have already told us enough for a court-martial,” Schulze exclaimed, slapping the pilot on the back.
“You shouldn’t tell the enemy what you have or don’t have.”
Captain Ruell interpreted for him.
“I only said that heavy artillery is on the way.”
“Who cares?” Eisner shrugged. “There is a mountain between your artillery and us.”
“The mountain will not help you.”
The Russian shook his head. He turned and pointed toward a ridge five miles to the southeast. “The artillery is going up there.”
“Nonsense!” I said. “There is no road.”
“There is a road,” Captain Ruell interposed, “right up to hill Five-O-Six. We had four Bofors there in early March.”
Looking at the map I realized that Captain Ruell was right and what the Russian pilot was saying had a ring of truth. Should the Soviet commander mount some heavy artillery on that hill, he could indeed shell our plateau by direct fire.
We gave the Russian a hearty meal and allowed him to leave. He was immensely happy and promised to do everything for us should we meet again after surrendering. “Food, vodka, cigarettes, Kamerad. My name is Fjodr Andrejevich. I will tell our commander that you are good soldiers and should be well treated.”
“Sure you will,” Eisner growled, watching the Russian leave. “You just tell your commander and you will be shot before the sun is down as a bloody Fascist yourself.”
The pilot walked away slowly, turning back every now and then as though still expecting a bullet in the back. Having passed our last roadblock it must have occurred to him that he was still alive and unhurt, and he began to race downhill as I had never seen a man run. Eisner was not very enthusiastic about the Russian’s departure.
“He saw everything we have up here,” he remarked with barely concealed disapproval in his voice.
“We had no choice but to let him go,” Colonel Steinmetz challenged him sharply. “The war is over, Herr Untersturmfuhrer.”
“Not for me, Herr Oberst,” Eisner replied quietly. “For me the war will be over when I greet my wife and two sons for the first time since August 1943, and it isn’t over for the Russian either. He came here flying not the white flag but a fighter bomber.”
“I haven’t seen my family since June 1943,” the colonel remarked.
I drew Eisner aside. “You should not worry about the Ivan,” I told him with an air of confidence. “What can he tell? That we have men, weapons, tanks, and artillery? The more he tells the less eager they will be to come up here.”
I put an arm around his shoulder. “Bernard, we’ve killed so many Russians. We can surely afford to let one individual go.”
He grinned. “I have read somewhere what the American settlers used to say about the Indians, Hans. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. I think that is also true of the Bolsheviks.”
“Maybe the pilot was not a Bolshevik?”
“Maybe he wasn’t—yet. But if you ask me, Hans, I can tell you that anyone who is working for Stalin is game for me.”
He lit a cigarette, offered me one, then went on. “I know that we are defeated and that there will be no Fatherland to speak of for a long time to come. For all we know the Allies might break up the Reich into fifty little principalities, just as it was five hundred years ago. We scare them stiff, even without weapons, even in defeat. But I cannot suffer the thought of having been defeated by a rotten, primitive, lice-ridden Communist mob. I know that no conqueror in history was ever soft on the conquered enemy. We might survive the American and the British but never the Soviet. Stalin won’t be satisfied with what he may loot now. He will not only take his booty, but he will try to take our very souls, our thoughts, our national identity. I know them. I’ve been their prisoner. It was for only five days but even then they tried to turn me into a bloody traitor. The Russians are mind snatchers, Hans. They will not only rape our women, they will also turn them into Communists afterwards. Stalin knows how to do it and now he will have all the time on earth. He is going to increase the pressure inch by inch. I could gun down anyone who is helping Stalin.”
“You would have quite a few people to gun down, Bernard. Starting with the British and finishing with the Americans. They have not only helped Stalin, but also brought him back from his deathbed and made him a giant.”
“Stalin will be most obliged to his bourgeois allies,” Eisner sneered. “Just wait and see how Stalin will pay for the American convoys. Give him a couple of years. Mister Churchill and Mister Truman are going to enjoy a few sleepless nights for Mister Roosevelt’s folly.”
“That won’t help us much now, Bernard!”
“I guess not,” he agreed- After a brief pause he added, “If you decide to surrender, Hans, just let me have a gun and a couple of grenades. I will find my way home.”
“You won’t be alone.”
I gave him a reassuring tap. “I don’t feel like hanging in the main square of Liberec, either.”
“I don’t feel like submitting myself to what comes between the surrender and the hanging,” he added with a sarcastic chuckle.
Early in the afternoon the PO-2’s returned, but we did not fire on the flimsy canvas planes which carried no weapons. The Russians had sent us another load of leaflets, among them newspaper cuttings announcing the armistice, and photocopies of the protocol bearing the signature of General Field Marshal Keitel. Again we were requested to lay down our weapons and evacuate into the valley under the flag of truce.
“This is it!” Colonel Steinmetz spoke quietly as he crumpled the Soviet leaflet between his fingers. “This is it!” And as though providing an example, he unbuckled the belt which supported his holster, swung it once, and tossed the belt on a flat slab of stone. I expected nothing else from Colonel Steinmetz. He was a meticulously correct officer, a cavalier of the old school who would always keep to the letter of the service code. He could see no other solution but to comply with that last order of the German High Command, or what was left of it. Moving like automatons, his three hundred officers and men began to file past our sullen group, the troops casting their rifles and sidearms onto the mounting pile. But the artillery, the small panzer detachment, and the Alpenjaegers kept their weapons, and, with a skill born of habit, the SS took over the vacated positions.
“I am sorry,” Colonel Steinmetz said quietly, and I noticed that his eyes were filled. “I cannot do anything else.”
“There is no longer a high command, Herr Oberst, and the Fuehrer is dead. You are no longer bound by your oath of allegiance,” I reminded him.
He smiled tiredly. “If we wanted to disobey orders we should have done it a long time ago,” he said. “Right after Stalingrad. And not on the front but in Berlin.”
“You mean a successful twentieth of July, Herr Oberst?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I think what Stauffenberg did was the gravest act of cowardice. If he was so sure of doing the right thing, he should have stood up, pulled his gun, shot Hitler, and taken the consequences. But I don’t believe in murdering superior officers. The Fuehrer should have been declared unfit to lead the nation and, removed. Had Rommel or Guderian taken command of the Reich, we might have won—if not the war, at least an honorable peace.”
“It is either too late or still too early to discuss the Fuehrer’s leadership, don’t you think, Colonel Steinmetz?”
“You are right. Now all we can do is hoist the white flag.”
