On Desperate Ground (2 page)

Above them all stood Faust. He was perched on the front of the engine, standing with his arm lazily wrapped around the searchlight on the face of the locomotive.
 

“Come
Leutnant
, it’s now or never,” challenged Faust.
 

Dieter shook himself and mounted the engine as he had been trained to do. He knew everything that would happen, until they journeyed beyond the exact memorized moves of their training procedures and into the unknown, over the border, beyond the next hill.
 

Jost was at the last car, and signaled ahead that all was ready. The ersatz Dutch soldiers were at their stations and the regular Wehrmacht
Landser
were hidden inside. Every man was in place.

“Forward!” yelled Faust and drew out the word as he held his arm pointed ahead.
 

The train lurched as the massive wheels moved beneath Dieter. He held on to the handrail as the train picked up momentum and the wind began to whip the air around them.
 

Once they got up to speed it took ten minutes for the Dutch border station to come into sight. Dieter squinted against the wind and dust and saw nothing unusual. He had scouted the border crossing every day for the past week. There were two Dutch soldiers in front of the gate lowered across the tracks, two in a machine gun pit on the north side, and several more within a small guard shack a few meters down the line.

As the train grew closer and did not slow, Dieter could see the guards start to wave their arms, probably assuming the engineer would hit the brakes any moment. The whistle let out a long blast and the train increased in speed. The wind was more powerful now, and Dieter tried to shield his tearing eyes while at the same time tracking the movements of the enemy. He drew his pistol, letting the wind rip at his face.

The train flew through the barrier, splintering wood as the Dutch yelled, reacting to the violent rush of the locomotive. An explosion boomed on the opposite side of the train as grenades dealt with the machine gun emplacement. Dieter turned quickly as the engine pulled the cars through the crossing. Several Dutch soldiers on his side of the train were running alongside, unslinging their rifles. They were receding in Dieter’s vision as he heard a burst of fire and saw the Dutch drop in their tracks. They were the first dead men Dieter had ever seen. They crumpled completely, as if the bodies had evaporated, leaving nothing but green rags and a rifle to fall to the ground. A helmet rolled down the embankment and then everything vanished, as the tracks veered to the right.

Dieter’s mouth was open wide and his heart was pounding furiously. One hand gripped the railing and the other clenched his pistol, unfired. He felt frozen in place, confused and half blind as the wind blew tears sideways across his face. He could hardly take in what had happened, so suddenly and violently.
 

He looked up at Major Faust, hoping for guidance or reassurance. What he saw was a glimpse into the depths of the man totally focused on what lay ahead. Faust was high on his perch, staring into the wind as it blasted him. He did not look back, nor to his men. He held his gaze calmly on the horizon. No squinting, tears, or movement marred his face. His eyes were like stones.

CHAPTER ONE

31 December 1944

Rozan, Poland

Behind Russian Lines

Some days were better than others for Colonel Johann Faust. There were days when he didn’t think about it for hours. There were occasional nights when he actually slept without nightmares. Once in a while he woke up without thinking about Anna first thing.

Today was not such a day.

Faust crawled forward, slowly and carefully, so his weight against the snow make no sound, nothing to signal a heavily armed soldier pressing down on a foot of freshly fallen snow. He stopped, lowering his face into the cold snow, trying to shock himself back to reality.

No, not now! Not here!

He lifted his face from the whiteness. Frozen crystals fell from his cheeks as he shook off the snow that had melted from his body heat, instantly refreezing among the tears he hid from his men. Faust took a deep breath, slowly and deliberately turning his head. He saw his two men, clad totally in white, crawling behind him. Their weapons, StuG 43 Assault Rifles, were wrapped in white cloth, as were their boots. The only non-white items were their warm Russian fur caps, the best headgear for prolonged periods in the freezing cold, covered by the hoods of their white parkas. Lying in the snow, they were practically invisible.
 

Satisfied with their pace, Faust thought of the mission, his responsibility calming and focusing him. They had a long way to go and he could not allow his emotions to take over. He exhaled in relief as the desperation passed, careful to not send a plume of telltale frozen breath sailing into the air. He crawled on at an agonizingly slow pace, aware that the slightest abrupt motion could be picked up in the peripheral vision of an alert Russian sentry.
 

Faust was aware of the pressure lurking within his mind, barely contained. It had been there for months, growing and feeding on itself, since he had received the news. News that he had hoped would never come. News that he knew he was partly responsible for. It came from East Prussia, the eastern-most province of Germany, on the Baltic coast, where his family was counted among the minor nobility, living in the deep Prussian forests at the outer reaches of the German border.
 

His fiancée, Anna von Seydel, was from an older, nobler, but slightly impoverished family on a neighboring estate. They had been inseparable as children, playing each summer in the fields and gardens of their family homes. As they grew, their fondness had blossomed into love and they had looked forward to a life together, living amongst their families and the familiar green hills of East Prussia. It seemed to them that fate had joined them, and that nothing could stand in their way. As he thought back to those days, Faust could smell the freshness of Anna’s long blond hair in the sunshine and the fresh scent of the pine forest in springtime.

But then war came, delaying the grand wedding their families had planned. At first, it seemed as if the conflict would be brief, and victory certain. Instead, defeat in North Africa followed defeat at Stalingrad, and the fates seemed to laugh at the young lovers. There was no wedding, no return home except for one short leave and later, another to recuperate from wounds. Faust had begged his parents to leave East Prussia before the Russians got too close. They refused to listen. Faust’s father had taken his wife’s hand, gently cupping it in his, and said it was quite simply out of the question. They had lived through the Great War, he said, and would live through this one too, on the family lands.
 

Faust pleaded with Anna to convince her family to leave, but she failed as well. Her parents were also stubborn, bound to the ancient soil. They had been together for one last dinner party, the last night of Faust’s leave. The candlelight of the dining room still sparkled in his memory. His mother, her dark hair streaked silver, her favorite strand of pearls around her neck, laughed and worked hard not to show her deep sadness at her only son’s departure. His father, broad-chested, with close-cropped hair and a handlebar mustache, toasted his son and future daughter-in-law, and quietly patted the arm of his wife, reassuring her with a gesture, all he had to give. Anna’s mother told stories of watching the Czar’s cavalry ride by during the last war, their uniforms as dazzling to her young eyes as their prancing horses. Perhaps Stalin’s army would not be as proper, but they would find a way to cope, wouldn’t they?

Faust remembered holding his tongue, knowing that he had failed to convince them they must go. He knew things they did not, things he had seen which convinced him the Russians would take a terrible revenge when they came to German territory. To East Prussia. He choked on the memories, ashamed to admit to them, to all the death, savagery and destruction he had witnessed and contributed to on the eastern front. It was not the war his father had fought a generation ago, and he had no wish to tell this proud man his son had the blood of innocents on his hands. Instead, he sat quietly, drinking excellent wine, listening to those he loved convince themselves the Soviet occupation would be unpleasant, but survivable, knowing all the time that if it was anything like the German occupation of Russia, the ground of his homeland would be soaked in blood.
 

Faust blanked out these thoughts as he crawled to the base of a large pine tree, its limbs coated with thick white snow. He signaled to his men to rest for a minute under the cover of the low branches. Sitting up, he looked from where they had come. It was beginning to snow, the white coating already hiding their tracks.

Excellent
, he thought, enjoying the cat and mouse game of this reconnaissance behind enemy lines, the physical thrill of spying on the enemy, and the respite it brought him from the demons. He heard the sound of engines from the next ridge, and knew they were close to their objective. He tried to relax, knowing the short distance to the ridgeline would be the most dangerous part of the approach. Looking around, he breathed in the stark beauty of the green firs rising from the snow-draped landscape.
Just like home.

As soon as that innocent thought slipped out, Faust knew it was a mistake. Memories of Anna in winter played out in his mind, joyful and alive against the pure white snow. He feared he would not be able to quiet them.

Please, no…

The last time he had seen her was in winter, late in the season, the coming of spring and the Russians both a certainty. On that visit, there were no candlelit parties. Anna’s parents were ill, suffering from the cold and the lack of proper food. She refused to leave them. He ordered, argued, cajoled, begged and pleaded. Nothing worked.
 

His parents were nearly as desperate, living in two rooms to cut down on the firewood needed to keep warm. He had walked through empty hallways, mirrors covered in frost, a chill cast over the scenes of his boyhood. Their remaining servants all crowded into a single room, only the old, very young and sick left. His parents refused to abandon them, refused to leave their home and the people who depended on them. He finally extracted a promise from his father, that at the first sound of artillery, they would leave and head west, on horseback, on foot, whatever it took. His father agreed, and Faust forced himself to believe they would go.

He was forced to depart early, another breakthrough on the Russian front canceling all leaves. At the railroad station, Anna had kissed him good-bye and told him not to worry. He had smiled and promised to come back for all of them when they were well, and the emergency at the front was over. They both knew his orders might not allow it, but they pretended it was true, holding hands until the train started to move and Faust jumped aboard, gazing into Anna’s blue eyes until a blast from the engine threw up a cloud of steam, and she was lost to him.

He did not want to think about what happened next, instead signaling one of his men to stay at the fir tree, to provide covering fire in case they needed to beat a hasty retreat. He crawled out from under the branches, his body tense and alert for the sounds of sentries on patrol. Eyes darting over the landscape, he tried to refocus on the mission, not the agonizing thoughts of Anna in the hands of the Russians.

The knowledge of what had happened to her and to his parents was burned into his brain. One of his father’s stable hands, a tough old man of seventy-five years, had seen everything, and then walked over the hills to Anna’s home to warn them, arriving in time only to see a second terrible tragedy. He alone survived the ordeal, escaping west and eventually finding Faust, telling him everything.
 

The old man had gone after a stray horse, leading him back through the woods when he saw the Russians surround the house. They took the horses from the barn, and the people from the house. They shot all the male servants. Faust’s father was strung up by his ankles and hung over the barn door. They left him alive as they raped his wife, two young servant girls, and an old woman. The Russians lined up, ten or more for each woman, spread-eagled in the snow. Screams of rage, anguish and protest rose up to the old man’s ears, and then faded to sobs and moans. When they were done, they shot all the women. Then they looted the house, and set fire to it. Only then, as they left with their horses and valuables, did they slit the elder Faust’s throat, his blood soaking the soil, as his son had foreseen.

It was different at Anna’s home, different only in that the Russians there didn’t burn the house, since they intended to stay. The old stable hand had been captured and beaten, then forced to work for the Russians. His first duty was to remove Anna’s parents from their sickbed, where they had been shot, their end at least quick. Anna, they kept for days, a company of Russians raping her repeatedly. The old man told Faust how she had called for him, screaming his name into the night when they came for her
, Johann, Johann, Johann
.
 

Finally, how she had broken free and found the only escape possible, jumping through a fourth story window, smashing headfirst through the glass to the cobblestone drive below.