A Kiss for the Enemy (28 page)

‘They came down to the river, to the Don. Their arms were linked. They had neither the ability nor the thought of using their weapons. Something – drink, demons, – was driving them on, a human tide, screaming “Urra”, swaying, thousands followed by other thousands, marching across the great frozen river towards us. Nearer and nearer.

‘We were thin on the ground on the Don front. When they were about half-way across our machine guns opened up – the Don is over a kilometre wide there – and the whole lot came down. We could hear those yells of drunkenness and savagery change to screams of pain and terror as our fire found its mark, brought men down, and others staggered and fell, unable to free themselves from their comrades who'd been killed or wounded next to them in the ranks. The machine gun bullets, where they didn't strike flesh, threw up a fine white spray from the ice, rather beautiful. We could see men trying to claw at the solid ice as if they could burrow into it. It was like a great dark, obscene pool of blood spreading across a white carpet. The carpet was the icy Don, the pool of blood was a mass of suffering, writhing, bleeding creatures – more animal than human, or so I'm afraid we all felt –'

‘It is shocking,' said Kaspar von Arzfeld austerely, finding his voice, ‘shocking for any command, of any nation, to commit soldiers to battle in such a way.'

‘Shocking, Father? Perhaps. But it was successful.'

‘
Successful?
'

‘Oh yes, successful. You see the second wave was immediately followed by a third. And they were protected by the bodies of their predecessors until they were much nearer our bank. And by then, you know, our people were getting low in ammunition. It's not as if we had huge numbers of machine gun posts; and the Russians were going to keep on advancing. “Urra, Urra!” Of course, the cost to them was immense –
horrible. But we pulled our people back. We had to. I know the Russians can't do that everywhere. Their losses have been unbelievable. But where they decide there is a real operational need to punch a hole they won't shrink from a terrible casualty bill – they'll punch that hole. Is that such bad strategy, Father? From their point of view it can surely be argued that an expensive success is still a success: that only failure is really expensive – when there is nothing to put on the credit side of the account.'

Frido was speaking with a sort of chilling irony, as if he could understand certain processes of thought, could even respect them intellectually while finding them entirely odious.

‘They have always held human life lightly,' muttered his father.

Frido looked at him thoughtfully. Then he started talking of something different. He spoke of the extraordinary hatred, hatred beyond the ordinary stresses and violence of war, which the campaign in the east seemed to have generated. He told Kaspar of many things.

‘The pain and sufferings of war are cruel,' said Kaspar. ‘We soldiers understand that although we do not speak much of it. It has always been so.'

‘Yes, Father, of course violent death, wounding, the shrieks of men with half their bodies burned away – of course these are terrible, but any soldier who does not expect to see and hear such things, if not to endure them, is a fool. I am not speaking of such things. I am talking of something else.'

Frido told his father of how his company had re-taken a village where a number of German prisoners had been held before being marched to the rear – prisoners taken in one of the first Russian counter-attacks in the summer of 1941. These prisoners, one and all, had been murdered immediately the German attack was in its turn renewed. There had been a chance, Frido acknowledged, that they might have been liberated – freed to fight against Mother Russia once again. No such risk could be taken by their captors. They had been cut down by machine guns and, in many cases, mutilated. Frido spoke quietly.

‘Their private parts had been cut off and stuffed into their mouths. Their hands were bound. Those who had survived
the bullets had been bayoneted. It had all taken a little time. The lucky ones, of course, died when the guns spoke. None of us knew what they had suffered before that. Large numbers had had their eyes gouged out. I don't think that was done to corpses. There was too much blood. That's what our men found when they retook the village.'

‘These are primitives, savages,' said his father grimly. ‘It is like fighting against tribes from darkest Africa, not against a people which, until a few years ago, was a Christian people. This is what Bolshevism has done to them!' His voice shook.

Frido seemed to consider, dispassionately.

‘I don't think one should say, Father, “
was
a Christian people”. In many ways they are still. I have told you frightful things. They were true. But there's another side. When we first went in, last year, we were often given a warm welcome. We opened up the churches, restored them to worship – you've read of that. It was very popular. Religion had been viciously persecuted. We were the people's liberators from the Bolsheviks.'

Kaspar had indeed read of that. ‘It made me very proud,' he said. ‘I wish these Americans and English who have allied themselves to the Soviets, I wish they understood this. They think that was German propaganda I suppose.'

‘It certainly wasn't that. It happened and I saw it. The terrible thing is that the effect is being entirely undone. We had the people as our friends.' Frido was hopping with his crutch up and down the study, up and down. He spoke in a low voice, pausing often.

‘They could still be our friends. But now they never will be. Now there is the sort of hatred I've described, the sort of cruelty, savagery, barbarity.

‘Do you know what is going on behind our front, Father? No, you cannot. And I will tell you. Or I will tell you a few things. A few little examples.

‘A friend of mine was slightly wounded at Kiev – von Hamelstein, the one in our division, I've spoken of him, you know his uncle. He rejoined us after only three weeks. Hamelstein travelled up to us by road most of the way, as it happened, and he went through a number of places the division had passed during the advance. He talked to a lot of officers
on the way forward. He told me, privately, what he had discovered.

‘There are special units established for security in the rear areas. Enormous numbers of Russians have been murdered – quite simply, murdered. By our own people. In one village all members of the Communist Party – about fifty – had been herded into a barn and shot.

‘In another place – a town – Hamelstein learned about the Jews. The Jews, of course, live – or lived – mostly in the towns. In this place there were over two thousand. They'd all been rounded up – men, women and children – and taken to a field outside the town. Then, covered by machine guns, they'd been made to dig a long ditch – about two hundred metres long. When it was done – and it seems they did it, perfectly docile, largely scrabbling earth out with their hands – then they were shot, the lot. And the
Einsatzgruppen
– that's the special security units, so called, the units who do this job – organized some tractors, from the local collective farm to push the bodies into the ditch and cover them. The tractors were driven by Russians, and as the final act they were shot as well and toppled into the ditch. Then the tractors were collected by other Russians. We're meant to be stimulating local agriculture, you see, it's going to help feed the Wehrmacht.

‘Hamelstein was told about all this by an SD –
Sicherheit dienst
– officer who was drunk. And that was only one story.'

Kaspar von Arzfeld listened, his eyes never leaving his son's face, following that face, that figure as it swung on the crutch up and down, up and down. Kaspar sat as if turned to stone. Frido's voice remained expressionless.

‘That is why, Father, I speak of the hatred which this campaign is generating. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting the Soviet Government or high command care a damn about their population, their civilians. In fact, there have even been incidents of civilians being herded forward in front of their attacks. Human shields. In an atmosphere so poisoned on both sides by cruelty and evil is it any wonder that men become beasts, and that mercy and decency die?'

Frido stood still for a little. Then he continued. He recalled for his father a phase during the winter fighting, on the Don
front. He described how an experienced
Feldwebel
reported one evening. The front was static.

‘We should send out a patrol again this evening,
Herr Leutnant.
'

‘It's not necessary. We've had no orders to do so, we know all we can about the Russians, and it's twenty degrees below freezing.'

‘It's not that,
Herr Leutnant.
There are three wounded men out there. And if we don't reach them the Russians will tomorrow. When we withdraw. We can't leave them alive to the Russians,
Herr Leutnant.
They were good soldiers. We must finish them off.'

It was often done. A patrol was risked on an errand of mercy, to make sure that wounded men did not fall alive into the Russian hands to meet a slow, horrible death as was only too likely.

‘Let us sit for a little in the garden,' said Kaspar, who had heard all in a terrible silence. ‘It is a fine evening,' he said mechanically. He heard himself saying –

‘In spite of all you have told me, I hope the enemy's wounded are decently cared for by our own people.'

Frido considered, ‘In the front line, certainly, by which I mean that our field hospitals, as far as I've seen them, do a wonderful job and according to the traditions of the service. They've saved many Russian lives. When I was operated on, for the second time – as you know, gangrene had set in, they were concerned – at that time there were Russian soldiers lying on either side of me. They were both charming boys, too, suffering badly and bravely. We were doing everything for them.'

‘In spite of all,' said his father, ‘I am greatly relieved to hear you say so.'

‘On the other hand I've heard very bad things about prisoner of war camps, or some of them. I spoke to a
Gefreiter
who was operated on at the same time as me and recovering with me. He'd seen a lot of Soviet prisoners. He told me a favourite trick in one camp – where many of them were sick and half-starved anyway – was to make them draw lots, every fifth wretch was hauled out and made to stand against a wall with his hands tied above his head. Then a grenade with the pin drawn out would be put in each of his trouser pockets. Our
people thought it was amusing. The
Gefreiter
who told me – of course his tongue was loose, he was in a state of post-operative shock, I suppose – said,

‘“You see,
Herr Leutnant
, our men knew that that was nothing compared to what the Ivans did to our prisoners,” which I expect is true.'

‘I cannot believe it!' said Kaspar, finding his voice, ‘I cannot believe it! You have not seen such things yourself!'

Frido looked at his father with sadness.

‘No, Father,' he said, ‘I've not seen that myself. But, unfortunately, I can believe it. You see, it's that sort of war. Not the sort you fought twenty-five years ago. Not the sort we fought in France. It's a different sort of war. The sort I've been describing.'

Kaspar made a gesture of demurral –

‘Surely –'

He looked at his son's expression and held his tongue.

It was indeed a fine evening. Kaspar rose from the wooden bench on which both had been sitting and took his son's arm. Supported by father and crutch Frido swung the full length of the house in silence. There was in the air an exquisite smell of spring.

‘It's that sort of war,' said Frido, almost inaudibly. He added, in a near whisper, ‘and that sort of Germany.'

Kaspar could find nothing to say. The sort of sententiousness which, surely, was the appropriate response from a father immersed in a tradition of duty to a doubting son seemed wholly out of place. With a sense of charade he heard himself sigh and utter –

‘Well, like many of our family you have drawn the sword for the Fatherland –'

‘Yes,' said Frido tonelessly. ‘Yes, Father. But doesn't it have to be a double-edged sword – with a back-stroke that can cut some standing behind one, some –'

This had gone far enough.

Girls' chatter and laughter sounded from round the corner of the old house. Frido's heart, as it always did and always would, lifted at the sound of Marcia's voice. He raised his hand in stiff salutation as Lise and Marcia walked towards them across the grass.

‘Excellent news, Frido,' Lise called. ‘Anna Langenbach is coming to stay for a few days. She's not been here for ages. She wants to see you very much. I've just had a letter.'

Anna had paid, with Franzi, one long visit to Arzfeld in the autumn of 1941. She had told a troubled Lise of how disagreeable the local
Kreisleiter
now was to her.

‘He hates me, of course. I had to make clear I didn't want his attentions. It happened here, at Arzfeld.' Lise was concerned.

‘Anna, you must be careful! You must be a little tactful, even if the man is horrible. There can be so much trouble made for you.'

‘It's too late to think of that. I spoke as I had to, from the heart.'

Lise could imagine. Now, however, Anna wrote better news.

‘You remember I spoke of a certain person here – he's departed! He's been enrolled to do “special work” for the Government-General in Poland. I'm sure it's very important.'

Nothing more. This must be a profound relief to Anna, thought Lise. The man might always return, and would periodically visit his home on leave, presumably; but the pressure of Schwede's mingled desire and hatred in the same small place had been removed and Anna must be feeling liberation. She could probably manage to avoid him if he only returned for short visits. Anna would be less anxious, more her previous, radiant self.