Derek Lambert - Vendetta

Hovering on the limits of the conversation, Meister heard whispers about Russia but paid little attention to them; nor, he admitted to himself waiting for the melted snow to boil, had he questioned any of the fireside boasts that evening. And he doubted whether the young German lying outside the pickling plant, feet shiny purple, face gnawed by rats, would have questioned them.

Even now bold claims were in circulation. Gruppe Hoth was storming towards Stalingrad; any day now it would link up with the Sixth Army. But the words had lost their shine. If Paulus was to meet Hoth where was his ammunition, fuel, food?

Goering who had once promised the children of dead Luftwaffe pilots a thousand Reichsmarks a day had also promised the Sixth Army 500 tons of supplies a day. But the sky had changed hands: the Stuka was no longer in command. And the Luftwaffe had been forced to deploy He-III bombers to augment Ju-52s flying supplies into Pitomnik and Gumrak airfields. Since the Russian encirclement they had to fly long distances; they were sabotaged by cold, blinded by blizzards, shot out of the skies by Soviet fighters. And when they did make it to the beleaguered airfields, they often brought useless cargoes. Rumour had it that on one occasion a Ju-52 had delivered two million French letters.

Five hundred tons a day?

Ask the troops dying of typhus or tetanus where their medicine was.

Ask the mortally wounded laid out in the cold to die outside an overcrowded hospital where the morphine was.

Ask the frost-bitten soldiers wearing wooden-soled boots stuffed with straw, blankets over their shoulders, where the winter clothes were.

Ask the cooks who had stewed the last dogs and cats, where the food was.

Ask the gunners rationed to thirty rounds a day where the bullets were.

Meister took the white cap that he had never been able to deliver from his pocket. Ask the parents of the boy and the girl on the scaffold where their children were.

‘Is it nearly ready?’ Meister stood up and stared at the Spam, juices spurting painfully in his mouth.

‘Patience. You learn that waiting for the tumblers of a safe to answer you.’ Carefully Lanz tipped boiling water into the jar containing the tea. ‘We’ve got empty stomachs and if we don’t wash the meat down it will bounce like hard shit on a drum.’

Meister continued to stare at the loaf of pink meat. He closed his eyes: it was a plum pudding. He smelled burning tallow from the Christmas tree candles. He smelled perfume. He opened his eyes as Lanz hurled himself at him, knocking him through the flimsy wooden door, pulling him down onto the snow.

The explosion outraged his ears. Pushed the wooden walls of the plant into the shape of a barrel, then burst them open. Timber fell across Meister’s body, the blast wrapped itself round him making him breathless, disfigured. Glass jars, still intact, still loaded with cucumbers, fell in the snow.

The quiet afterwards was intense.

Lanz, rolling clear, whispered: ‘A grenade. I saw it coming through the window while your mind was in your stomach.’

Meister tried to speak but his voice had been squeezed from his throat. Lanz, pistol in hand, wriggled, belly close to the snow, to a low concrete wall around a water pump. He turned his head once, gesturing to Meister to stay where he was.

Meister watched, trying to swallow the pain in his throat. His camouflage jacket was ripped and there was blood on his hand but he didn’t think he was badly hurt.

Somewhere on the other side of the shattered plant the Russians would be waiting in case there was any movement in the wreckage. A civilian storm group, probably.

A squall of snow swept across the steppe, pellets like shot. They stung Meister’s face. He saw Lanz aim his pistol.

Three shots. A scream so young that Meister was prepared for what he saw. The grenadier was about fourteen. His hair had been cropped and there were traces of acne amid the fuzz on his cheeks. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the snow-filled sky, and on his brow there was a suggestion of puzzlement.

December 23. Paulus, sitting at a desk in an office below the control tower at Gumrak airfield, looked even greyer than he had at Golubinskaya; the greyness had spread from the streaks in his dark hair to the skin of his solemn face. Nevertheless he smiled at Meister who had been summoned from the south-west of The Cauldron by the officer with the bloodshot eyes.

‘So neither you nor I has won.’ The twitch beneath one eye now reached for his cheek. And he hadn’t shaved; perhaps he was growing a beard.

The change in Paulus made Meister speculate how much he had altered since he had been pictured in Signal, dark and crisp, smiling for the photographer. The sensitivity that Elzbeth had once remarked upon must have been taken from him by Stalingrad.

‘With respect, Herr General, neither of us has lost yet.’

On the tarmac outside ground-crew were unloading a trimotored Ju-52 that had made it from a distant airfield. What had it been carrying? Dutch caps?

Paulus’s smile pushed some of the greyness from his face. ‘You’re right, you’re teaching me a lesson. The Luftwaffe will drop adequate supplies, Hoth will break through the Russian lines, I will break out of The Cauldron.’

Paulus stood up. He was huge. He gazed through the window at the bullet-pocked Ju-52. He was said to have idolised Hitler. Did he still?

The ground-crew worked slowly, like drunks concentrating. The aircraft and the tarmac and the shattered building beyond were sharp with cold this snowless day.

Paulus picked up a teletype from a tray and handed it to Meister who was standing at ease on the other side of the desk. ‘Read that and tell me what you think.’

Meister read the signature first, GOEBBELS, then the text. UNDERSTAND SOVIET SNIPER ANTONOV HAS NOT BEEN SIGHTED FOR SEVERAL WEEKS STOP SUGGEST THAT AS HE MUST BE PRESUMED DEAD WE CLAIM MEISTER SHOT HIM STOP THIS WOULD BE JUST THE SORT OF STIMULUS THE SIXTH ARMY AND THE GERMAN PEOPLE NEED STOP LET ME HAVE YOUR COMMENTS…

It’s words that win wars, not bullets.

‘Well?’

‘I don’t think Antonov is dead.’

‘Then why hasn’t he tried to kill you?’

‘Wounded, perhaps, Herr General?’

‘Then we would look very foolish if we claimed you had shot him and the Soviet newspapers showed photographs of him very much alive.’

‘Exactly, Herr General.’

‘Not, of course, that the German people would ever get to hear that he was still alive’.

‘But the Sixth Army would,’ Meister ventured.

‘I doubt very much whether the Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment is particularly concerned about the Sixth Army.’

Normally cynicism no longer shocked Meister: from a general, from Paulus, it did.

Paulus lit another of his interminable cigarettes and inhaled deeply. Meister imagined smoke issuing from his mouth, nostrils and ears. His lungs were surely black by now.

Paulus said: ‘What do you personally think of Herr Goebbels’ suggestion?’

‘I think it’s immoral, Herr General.’

‘So do I. I’m glad you said that: it took courage. I’m sure the Führer would have approved.’

Was Paulus bolstering his own resolve with some purpose in mind? The possibility excited Meister. He admired the big, arrogant general who was said to eat the same miserable rations as his men.

Paulus tore up the teletype and sat down on a swivel chair, occupied it, while the nerve beneath his eye performed a jig.

‘Christmas in Stalingrad,’ he remarked. ‘Hardly a festive prospect. Do you realise that one of these days historians are going to debate why General Friedrich von Paulus decided to spend Yuletide in The Cauldron?’