Men of Snow (3 page)

‘Brucker. Can...can you come over here a minute?’ was Schultz from his bunk bed in their tent.

‘You’re needed,’ Frumm muttered.

Most of the other recruits were laid out trying to get some rest.

Franz glanced over at Steiner who was propped up against his pillow reading a novel.

‘What is it?’ he asked when he sat next to Schultz.

‘I just....just wondered....just wondered.....’

‘Yes. I am scared. Yes I’m not sure how I’m going to manage. No I didn’t know there was going to be live ammunition to ensure we keep our heads down. That’s all you have to do Schultz, keep your head down and look as if you know what you’re doing.’

‘Now you’re angry with me.’

‘Not at all, I’m agreeing with you.’

‘But I haven’t said anything yet.’

‘And I agree with that as well.’

Frumm started laughing as Steiner looked over the edge of his book and said, ‘You have a friend Schultz who you should listen to.’

‘I do.’

‘And does it help?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You mean he’s wasting his time,’ Steiner continued.

‘No, not at all, he’s right. Brucker is right.’

‘Of course he is, absolutely right.’

Franz glanced at the smiling Steiner.

‘They’re speeding things up,’ was Frumm’s opinion, ‘That’s what they’re doing. Our Fuhrer is becoming impatient.’

By the middle of the next morning Franz found himself in a ditch half full of black water with other recruits on either side of him as planes came in from the south bombing a target in front of them.

It was when the artillery opened up that he started shaking. It began in his shoulders and down his back. Within seconds as explosions ripped their sounds through the air his whole body was in trauma. He had no idea what was happening. Quickly he glanced from side to side to see if anybody had noticed, but the other recruits had moved forward into the mist and smoke leaving him unable to get out of the ditch.

He was appalled. Every muscle was quivering and there was nothing he could do. Whatever he tried he could not control the shaking. Planes droned low overhead and the artillery was sending a constant barrage over his position, shells whining through the air and detonating with a massive sound that shook right through him.

A whistle blew as his trembling body slipped further into the ditch. Somebody was shouting commands as a group of recruits appeared out of the smoke and then went on forward. Quickly they disappeared leaving him with his legs thrashing around in the peat dark water and his hands trying to grasp hold of the muddy side of the ditch.

‘It’s only when it starts will you know what your reactions are going to be. The good soldier is often scared. It’s that fear that creates the greater need to overcome it, to be strong in your resolve. Fear creates the right kind of anger. To begin with the enemy is that fear. Defeat it and you become capable of anything.’

He pressed his face into the wet peat. The shaking was becoming worse. His mind was exhorting himself to get control. His body was in spasm, his teeth chattering, and icy water numbing his legs. When the next artillery barrage started he let go of his rifle and started crying in frustration. There was nothing he could do. This was worse than anything he had imagined. Part of his consciousness was screaming with horror at what was happening. In flashes he could see himself, this sobbing, writhing spectacle, an end of everything, of all his hopes, his dreams to become so much stronger.

The wet earth was filling his nostrils. He was momentarily aware that he had filled his pants, that he could no longer feel his legs, that his upper body was twisting and still shaking, his head gyrating until his teeth had cut into his gums, breathing in the blood and peaty soil so he was suffocating and could do nothing.

It was then in a split moment he was aware of the sound of the shell. There was something different about the noise it was making. In that moment he had shut his eyes, gulped in another mess of blood and soil, pressed his trembling body further down into the ditch at the sound of the approaching shell before its explosion ripped through all his senses in a sudden wave of silence and darkness.

The first thing when he became conscious was the sensation of his legs. It felt as though they had melted.

Franz stared along the ditch as muffled sounds echoed around him. He could not move his head. When he tried to explore his face with the hand that still had some sensation all he found was a piece of warm metal stuck into his right cheek and a smaller piece embedded in his neck.

Through his dimming awareness a voice was talking as the pains began to throb and his thirst was unbearable and he felt himself drifting back into the darkness where he wanted to be.

‘Franz! Brucker! Franz! Come on! Come on Franz! Listen to me! Listen to me Franz.’

He opened his eyes, aware of vomit coming out of his mouth and then settled back again.

There was a sudden terrible pressure on his right arm as low sounds buffeted around him.

‘There will be death. There will be terrible injuries. You will see comrades killed, mutilated. But you go on. You don‘t stop. You go on because that is what you are trained to do. The German soldier never allows anything to obstruct his progress. The goal has to be achieved.’

Waves of sound droned and slipped around him as he began to feel a release.

But there was still the pain. It felt as though his face had become huge in size, a massive lump of pain.

‘Come on Franz!’

This time when he tried to open his eyes they were stuck together, stitched by muddy grass from the side of the ditch and then sealed by his blood.

‘Franz!’

His eyes were shells exploding inwards. This other voice was a fresh artillery attack.

‘Medic! Medic!’ came a call from a huge distance away.

‘Somebody! Somebody fucking help here!’

‘When you are trained you will be physically stronger and fitter than you have ever been. But the enemy will be strong. When you are trained you will be superbly equipped. But the enemy will be equipped. The difference that leads to victory is in the mind. What you are fighting for. Determination. Refusal to back down. The cause. In a soldier’s mind, his will, is where the battle is won and lost.’

His skull was about to split open, his neck severed. There was a cold draft of air and then he was floating towards where everything would end.

CHAPTER 2

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In the hospital his mind wandered through repeated memories. He would watch the nurse at the end of the ward sitting at her desk in a small pool of light from her lamp, listening to the movements of the other patients and then start to remember who he had once been.

‘For goodness sake Franz, you’re old enough to look after your own bits and pieces. But mind that you do. It’s in the little unseen areas where disease can start.’

His boyhood bath was always steaming hot, full of a fragrant solution that bubbled up under the force of the tap water.

Slowly he would lower himself in, gasping at the heat. The bathroom would have disappeared in clouds of steam that filmed over the mirror on which he would draw faces before rubbing a space to watch the process of drying himself.

The bath had been the best place for an erection, the hot water stimulating his penis that he would watch emerging out of the bubbles. He lay there feeling it tighten and harden, all pink except for the end that was a tiny purple dome with its slit and ring of skin like a pulled plastic band.

He would explore every detail, the pulling and caressing, the finger ends up and down with the foreskin sensitively massaging his erection, quick and almost painfully hard and the tightness in his stomach, the phlegm in his throat, the momentary closing of his eyes as he kept his hand in motion, waiting, willing for a release that still would not come. It was his secret, his shame, dreading every bath night’s attempt.

It had been after one of those desperate sessions when his arm ached and his penis had been pulled raw and he had felt sick with the effort that his father had been waiting for him.

Dried, powdered, teeth cleaned, fresh pyjamas, dressing gown on and out onto the landing.

Immediately he knew. It was the usual shock and fear of what was to happen. Then he hated his father. Like his failed masturbation he had not yet the strength to fight back.

‘You know Franz, don’t you?’

‘Yes sir,’ he was forced to mutter.

‘So I would like an account.’

‘Is it about after school?’

‘You tell me.’

He had felt exposed, as though his father had been watching him in the bathroom.

Franz already associated sperm with strength. When he could produce it then he would be able to resist his father. That was the hope.

‘I was asked by mother to go to the baker’s.’

His father already had the belt ready, thick leather with a brass buckle, held in his left hand so most of the belt trailed down to the floor.

‘And what was your response?’

‘It was wrong sir.’

‘Stop it Franz. If you answer too quickly we will have to start again.’

‘I responded in the wrong way. I said I would go later. I said....’

‘You did not say young man. You told. You told your mother.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘And why?’

‘I was finishing my homework.’

‘Have we ever taught you that something is more important than a request from your mother? You’re old enough now to be aware of what you are doing. Do you agree?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘So what is the consequence?’

‘I have to be punished.’

‘And you agree that you have to be punished?’

His penis was tiny and limp in his pyjama bottoms. He could feel the sweat prickling across his forehead, not from the bath, but from the fear of what was going to happen.

‘I agree sir,’ he finally said.

His father had ordered him into his room. This was the worst part, the deliberate part where his father left him waiting. The mind was being punished before the body. Twice it had been so bad he had rushed to the bathroom to vomit into the flush toilet, one of the only ones in the village.

Once he had imagined himself packing his rucksack, running down the stairs out into the village street, out then into the first meadows to take the path that lead through the trees fringing the first line of mountains. Then he would be free. He would never return, never again to feel his buttocks split apart and have the blood dribbling down the back of his legs.

‘Here, put the towel on the floor,’ he had been told.

His father had come into Franz’s bedroom with one of the large family towels neatly folded in his arms.

‘On the floor by the bed, spread it out.’

His son had done as he was told.

‘Spread it out properly and stand on it.’

It had felt soft and warm under the soles of his bare feet.

‘Now drop your pyjama bottoms.’

The lump in his throat was like a huge lead pellet pressing against the inner skin. Again his arms were shaking as he tried to untie the cord of his pyjamas.

‘Hurry up Franz.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Untie them.’

‘Yes sir.’

With his back to him he let them drop around his ankles.

‘Now step out of them and put them on the bed.’

His legs were in spasm. His breaths were hurting in his chest and a pain was thumping down the sides of his head.

‘Now lift up the top until your bottom is clear.’

Again automatically he followed the next order.

‘Lean forward so your hands are on the edge of the bed.’

The blood rushed forward as he stretched down, feeling so exposed, his arse stuck up towards his waiting father.

‘Now open your legs slightly. I don’t want you losing your balance.’

‘Yes sir,’ Franz gasped as he closed his eyes, shaking and trembling, the sickness and hatred burning in his throat while he felt his father getting prepared.

He immediately tensed as he heard the first muffled steps as his father came across the room to lash the belt in a downward and angled motion.

The pain was the shock that had him stretching, gritting his teeth, pushing his hands deep into the eiderdown trying to ready himself for the next blow.

One followed the other and on to the tenth and then it was over.

He could not move. His father was out of breath behind him. Nothing was said. The cuts into his flesh now quickly turned into a spreading pain like a pulse wave of bruising. He was almost gone, almost unconscious, the unbearable lashing that had produced the blood that was dribbling down the backs of both legs.