Panzer Soldier

come at us.'

Deborah watched him closely; there was no doubt in her mind that he was telling the truth as he saw it. 'But why then do you continue to fight, don't you want the war to end?'

He nodded. 'Yes, it's about time for this one to come to a halt, but not yet.' He lit up another cigaret. 'You see, the job now, though it will cost thousands of lives, is to bleed the Soviets as dry as we can every day, and hold them back long enough to give the British and Americans time to advance further into Europe and give more civilians time to escape to the West, ahead of the Russians. If we stopped now, there would be no stopping them, they would overrun all of Europe. In his own mind, Stalin is the Genghis Khan of this century and he wants to achieve what every conqueror has always wanted, to be master of the world and all that's in it. Hitler is no different, perhaps only a little madder.'

She still didn't understand fully; consternation showed in her facial expressions. 'If that's true, why did you fight to start with?'

He sucked on his smoke and blew the residue out of his nostrils. 'In the beginning, as I told you, I believed the great lie, too. I have fought the hordes before. I believed, as did most of the other Germans, that war was inevitable between the West and Asia.

'It was felt that the Soviets would someday advance with all the hordes of Asia at their command, to loot and destroy the Western nations. They had to be stopped by a united Europe if civilization was to survive, and not drop back into the dark ages. I couldn't believe that the Germans I knew were capable of the horrors that they later inflicted on the world, but by then, it was too late to stop. You just had to go on and hope for the best, and there was some indication that Hitler would not outlast the assassination attempt by members of the general staff, but somehow the madman survived. So now I wait, and do what I can. One man can never really do a great deal; everything is too big, you're lost among the rules and regulations, the habits of training and survival take over; you're just too small to fight insanity on a scale the size of this, so I go on. But recently a friend of mine died to prove something, and now I think it's time for me to try another way, to separate myself from the masses of this holocaust, although what I will do will have little, if any, real effect on the outcome.'

Rising, he stretched his arms and put another log on the fire, turning his back to the flames. The heat felt good against the back of his legs. 'And you! What about you, Deborah Sapir?'

Deborah thought carefully before answering; what difference did it make if he were lying, the SS were going to kill her anyway. 'I was at Auschwitz for six months; the officers liked my looks so they let me live. I was being taken to entertain at a party for one of them when the car was ambushed by partisans. Since that time I have been with different organizations trying to do what we could to save the Jews remaining; there are very few left now.'

Langer moved a little bit away from the fire; it was growing too warm on the back of his legs. 'Tell me what it was like there, I have to know.' He moved to the table and sat opposite her again.

Her eyes took on a vacant expression; the words came by themselves. She became an instrument for the sake of the pain and suffering that poured out; she had been a whore for the SS, not because she was afraid to die, but because they paid her off with her life and food, some of which she gave to the children in the camp.

Through her eyes, he was drawn into the hell that was Auschwitz. Watching children torn from their mothers' arms and herded together to pass under a horizontal rod; those tall enough to touch it would live, for a while longer at least. Those too small were sent to the gas chambers immediately. Through the tears, he saw the young ones trying to stretch their necks, standing on tiptoe; anything to make them a little taller. The children knew somehow that something terrible awaited those who failed to touch that horrible high marker. The cries and screams, the stench of the ovens burning the waste that had once been people, while in the background the prison band played overtures from Schubert and Paganini. The tears running down her face, dropping on the table, made pools of sorrow for all mankind.

He saw it all, the dark clouds that hung constantly over the camp. The ashes from the ovens that fell, even into what little food they had. But it was the faces of the children that tore at his mind. The children, always it is the children; the innocents stand out the most. They danced for the amusement of the SS officers and sang sweet songs of the fields and valleys. Then they were gassed. The Panzer Soldier cried. From within, his life source, came a groan that transcended anything he had ever felt. Great choking sobs tore at him as the children spoke to him from Deborah's tears; the Old One cried.

The creaking of the door hinges swung him around; the SS Hauptsturmfuhrer stepped inside shaking his shoulders loose from the snow. His two henchmen followed. The officer stepped forward to where Deborah sat, his face full of anticipation; he grabbed her by the hair.

'Well, Jew bitch, it's time to go. Your three friends didn't take long to tell us all they knew. They're down the road a little ways waiting for your arrival.' He laughed, enjoying himself. 'They won't go anywhere for a while, though, so we have time to entertain you a bit first. You know the fat one? Well, he's at least four inches taller now than before. I suppose the extra weight made his neck stretch further than the others.'

Not looking, he asked the Panzerman, 'Did you enjoy yourself, comrade?'

He barely had time to notice the tanker's movement before the steel body of the Schmeisser crushed into his face, spreading his grin into a bloody smile as the bone crunched under the blow and the jawbone splintered.

The two SS men froze for a second, then the taller of the two started to swing his weapon up to fire, only to feel cold-burning pain as Langer's bayonet sunk into his stomach. He gave one weak whimper for his mother and fell. The other raised his above his head wanting to surrender.

But Langer was beyond any act of mercy. The pleading was cut off as scarred strong hands went around his throat and raised him from the floor, shaking him like a dog.

Tears ran in rivers as Langer shook until the SS man was no more than a crooked-necked broken doll waiting to be picked up and thrown away.

The Haupsturmfuhrer gurgled through his broken face as he tried to raise himself up from the floor on to his hands and knees. Turning, Langer gave him one solid kick under the chin, snapping the man's head back until the vertebrae crushed in on each other.

The force of the kick flipped him over on his back. The grinning Deathshead insignia on his collar tab leered happily at another victim. Langer stood there empty-handed, stoop-shouldered and drained.

The touch of a gentle hand on his shoulder brought him back to his senses. Deborah stood watching, her face torn with sorrow. 'We have to go now,' she spoke as she would have to a child. 'We have to go before anyone else comes.'

Nodding weakly, he picked up the weapons from the floor and took the officer's pistol and stuck it into his