Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

Max smiled, unwilling to pass comment on the mission.

The two men finished shaking hands and Schroder offered his hand enthusiastically to Pieter.

Pieter stared silently at the extended hand a moment before reluctantly offering his. ‘Hauptman,’ he said drily. Schroder barely registered the coolness of the gesture before Major Rall decided to step in.

‘Hauptman Schroder, and your men, come with me and I will introduce you to the other pilots who arrived last night… and then perhaps I think it is time for you and your new squadron to be briefed.’

Schroder and his two wingmen turned smartly and followed Rall out of the hangar into the pale light of morning.

‘What the hell was that all about, Pieter?’ asked Max.

‘I just don’t like his type. Bloody stuck-up arseholes, the lot of them.’

‘Maybe, but he’s a bloody superior officer first.’

Max could sympathise a little with him. The Luftwaffe had an appalling reputation for snobbery, preferring to pick its fighter pilots from the ranks of the aristocracy. Following the example Goring set, the Luftwaffe saw itself as the latter-day equivalent of an exclusive, members-only cavalry regiment. Pieter had joined the Luftwaffe and passed examinations that would mark him out as pilot material, but he was never going to find himself flying a fighter, not unless they ran completely out of men like Schroder.

‘Take it easy, Pieter, we’re all on the same side.’

26 April 1945, an airfield south of Stuttgart

Major Rall had billeted Max and his men in one of the vacated radio rooms. The room had once housed a nerve centre of intelligence-gathering equipment and personnel. Now it was little more than a grey painted concrete box. Several tables remained, and scuff marks and scratches on their surface hinted at the machinery that had once been there.

Rall had provided some blankets and a gas heater, which they gratefully fired up in the evenings when the cold seeped through the blankets on the hard concrete floor. The men had managed to make themselves at home in the room, spreading out their blankets around the heater on the floor. On the ground beside the heater there was a growing pile of empty food tins. The Major had certainly delivered on his promise to find adequate supplies for them. They hadn’t eaten this well in months. Max decided that it was probably time they were gathered up and chucked into one of the other empty rooms. He’d get one of his boys to do it in the morning.

The overhead lights in the room had been left off; both Pieter and Hans were asleep. Stefan was still awake and sat hunched over the glowing heater with his blanket draped over his shoulders.

‘You all right, lad?’ asked Max.

‘I’m fine, sir.’

Max sighed in the darkness. ‘For God’s sake, Stef, you can call me Max like the others, you know. You’ve been with us long enough now.’

‘Sorry… Max.’

They sat in silence for a while listening to the soothing hiss of the heater.

‘So, this is better than sitting out in the open, eh? Just think, we could still be sitting in the back of that truck.’

‘This is much better. Just to be warm again is great. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t cold.’

He couldn’t agree more.

If he lived to be ninety Max knew the most enduring memory of his time on the eastern front would be that of a constant battle with the cold. Staffel KG-301 had been stationed up on the northern end of the frontline near Murmansk for a good portion of the last two years. Up there, even in mid-summer, it was an unforgivably cold place to live.

‘Yes… warm is good,’ he replied, turning on his side to look at the amber glow of the heater.

Stefan sat hunched over it, a small, thin, ginger-haired youth with the pale skin of a child unblemished with the knocks and scrapes of life. He was nineteen, but he looked so much younger. He reminded Max of his younger brother, Lucian.

Lucian Kleinmann had been nineteen when he’d died. That had only been eight months previously. He had fallen in Poland, near the Vistula River, just east of Warsaw during the Russians’ summer offensive, Operation Bagration. Max’s parents had been given no details as to how his younger brother had died, just that he had been one of the casualties of the ill-equipped infantry regiment that had been placed in the way. There had been ten years between Max and Lucian, almost a generational divide. In many ways the age difference had made them more like father and son than brothers.

The news had almost broken Max, as it had his parents. A lot of the bitter anger he felt for the death of his younger brother was directed towards the Russians, quite understandably, but a little was also directed towards the German high command, for pointlessly throwing an infantry regiment in the path of a battalion of T-34s, a tactical decision born out of desperation, as they all seemed to be these days.

‘Max? Can I ask you a question?’

‘Of course, ask away.’

‘What will happen if we do make it there and drop the bomb?’

Max spent a moment considering the question. Rall had suggested that there was a growing feeling amongst the American people that Stalin and the communists were becoming a dangerous force in the world, and potentially an enemy that they would end up fighting some time in the near future. This bomb would provide them the final incentive to change sides.

‘The Americans will have no choice but to join up with us and fight the Russians.’

‘And what will the Russians do?’

‘They haven’t the resources to take on America and Britain combined. Even Stalin isn’t that crazy. They would have no choice but to turn around. I suppose we hope they will panic when they see the devastation this new explosive does and promptly withdraw.’

Stefan was silent for a moment, digesting Max’s answer.

He had a good mind, thought Max. One that soaked up information quickly, but more importantly extrapolated from it, applied it and used it.

‘If that happens, the Russians withdraw… will that be an end to it? An end to the war?’

Another good question.

‘Of course, because they’ll be out of our land, that’s all we’re after right now. I’m sure that would put an end to it.’

Really?

Max wasn’t entirely convinced by his own answer. Would the war truly end? Maybe it would for a few years, long enough for Germany to replenish her resources. But then what? He wondered whether a leader like Hitler would simply settle for Germany’s pre-war borders. After having conquered most of Europe, would he be happy with that?

Would he fuck. There would be another war.

Another war, a Third World War in ten, fifteen, twenty years? This time fought with planes and these super bombs. The world would obliterate itself with them. For a moment Max wondered whether the best thing to do would be to drop the weapon in the Atlantic when they reached it, where hopefully no one would ever find it and use it.

‘Do you think we’re going to do it, Max?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think we’ll make it across to America?’

The troubling doubts instantly vanished to the darkest corners of his mind as he considered the audacious, ambitious challenge Rall had presented to him. It could most certainly be done.

‘The Major’s put together a clever plan, Stefan… of course we will.’

That seemed to satisfy the lad for a few moments, before he looked up once more from the heater and stared at Max. ‘Why did you decide to do this mission? I know why the others did. Pieter I think because he believes in this country, Hans because he just wants some revenge, and me, I voted yes because of my family, my mother, my sisters… but you?’