Max Brooks - World War Z

I suddenly found myself speaking to General Lang, commander of the entire Northern Front. His voice was shaking. I could hear it even over the shooting. He told me the orders were not a mistake, that I was to rally what was left of the Hamburg Garrison and proceed immediately north. This isn’t happening, I told myself. Funny, eh? I could accept everything else that was happening, the fact that dead bodies were rising to consume the world, but this… following orders that would indirectly cause a mass murder.

Now, I am a good soldier, but I am also a West German. You understand the difference? In the East, they were told that they were not responsible for the atrocities of the Second World War, that as good communists, they were just as much victims of Hitler as anyone else. You understand why the skinheads and proto-fascists were mainly in the East? They did not feel the responsibility of the past, not like we did in the West. We were taught since birth to bear the burden of our grandfathers’ shame. We were taught that, even if we wore a uniform, That our first sworn duty was to our conscience, no matter what the consequences. That is how I was raised, that is how I responded. I told Lang that I could not, in good conscience, obey this order, that I could not leave these people without protection. At this, he exploded. He told me that I would carry out my instructions or I, and, more importantly, my men, would be charged with treason and prosecuted with “Russian efficiency.” And this is what we’ve come to, I thought. We’d all heard of what was happening in Russia … the mutinies, the crackdowns, the decimations. I looked around at all these boys, eighteen, nineteen years old, all tired and scared and fighting for their lives. I couldn’t do that to them. I gave the order to withdraw.

How did they take it?

There were no complaints, at least, not to me. They fought a little amongst themselves. I pretended not to notice. They did their duty.

What about the civilians?

[Pause.] We got everything we deserved. “Where are you going?” they shouted from buildings. “Come back, you cowards!” I tried to answer. “No, we’re coming back for you,” I said. “We’re coming back tomorrow with more men. Just stay where you are, we’ll be back tomorrow.” They didn’t believe me. “Fucking liar!” I heard one woman shout. “You’re letting my baby die!”

Most of them didn’t try to follow, too worried about the zombies in the streets. A few brave souls grabbed on to our armored personnel carriers. They tried to force their way down the hatches. We knocked them off. We had to button up as the ones trapped in buildings started throwing things, lamps, furniture, down on us. One of my men was hit with a bucket filled with human waste. I heard a bullet clang off the hatch of my Marder.

On our way out of the city we passed the last of our new Rapid Reaction Stabilization Units. They had been badly mauled earlier in the week. I didn’t know it at the time, but they were one of those units classified as expendable. They were detailed to cover our retreat, to prevent too many zombies, or refugees, from following us. They were ordered to hold to the end.

Their commander was standing through the cupola of his Leopard. I knew him. We’d served together as part of the NATO’s IFOR in Bosnia. Maybe it is melodramatic to say he saved my life, but he did take a Serbian’s bullet that I’m sure was meant for me. The last time I saw him was in a hospital in Sarajevo, joking about getting out of this madhouse those people called a country. Now here we were, passing on the shattered autobahn in the heart of our homeland. We locked eyes, traded salutes. I ducked back into the APC, and pretended to study my map so the driver wouldn’t see my tears. “When we get back,” I told myself, “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

General Lang.

I had it all planned. I would not look angry, not give him any reason to worry. I’d submit my report and apologize for my behavior. Maybe he’d want to give me some kind of pep talk, try to explain or justify our retreat. Good, I thought, I’d listen patiently, put him at ease. Then, when he rose to shake my hand, I’d draw my weapon and blow his Eastern brains against the map of what used to be our country. Maybe his whole staff would be there, all the other little stooges who were “just following orders.” I’d get them all before they took me! It would be perfect. I wasn’t going to just goose-step my way into hell like some good little Hitler Jugend. I’d show him, and everyone else, what it meant to be a real Deutsche Soldat.

But that’s not what happened.

No. I did manage to make it into General Lang’s office. We were the last unit across the canal. He’d waited for that. As soon as the report came in, he’d sat down at his desk, signed a few final orders, addressed and sealed a letter to his family, then put a bullet through his brain.

Bastard. I hate him even more now than I did on the road from Hamburg.

Why is that?

Because I now understand why we did what we did, the details of the Prochnow Plan.

Wouldn’t this revelation engender sympathy for him?

Are you kidding? That’s exactly why I hate him! He knew that this was just the first step of a long war and we were going to need men like him to help win it. Fucking coward. Remember what I said about being beholden to your conscience? You can’t blame anyone else, not the plan’s architect, not your commanding officer, no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices. He knew this. That’s why he deserted us like we deserted those civilians. He saw the road ahead, a steep, treacherous mountain road. We’d all have to hike that road, each of us dragging the boulder of what we’d done behind us. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t shoulder the weight.

[The room is windowless. Dim, fluorescent bulbs illuminate the concrete walls and unwashed cots. The patients here mainly suffer from respiratory disorders, many made worse by the lack of any usable medication. There are no doctors here, and understaffed nurses and orderlies can do little to ease the suffering. At least the room is warm and dry, and for this country in the dead of winter, that is a luxury beyond measure. Bohdan Taras Kondratiuk sits upright on his cot at the end of the room. As a war hero he rates a hung sheet for privacy. He coughs into his handkerchief before speaking.]

Chaos. I don’t know how else to describe it, a complete breakdown of organization, of order, of control. We’d just fought four brutal engagements: Luck, Rovno, Novograd, and Zhitomir. Goddamn Zhitomir. My men were exhausted, you understand. What they’d seen, what they’d had to do, and all the time pulling back, rearguard actions, running. Every day you heard about another town falling, another road closing, another unit overwhelmed.

Kiev was supposed to be safe, behind the lines. It was supposed to be the center of our new safety zone, well garrisoned, fully resupplied, quiet. And so what happens as soon as we arrive? Are my orders to rest and refit? Repair my vehicles, reconstitute my numbers, rehabilitate my wounded? No, of course not. Why should things be as they should be? They never have been before.

The safety zone was being shifted again, this time to the Crimea. The government had already moved… fled … to Sevastopol. Civil order had collapsed. Kiev was being fully evacuated. This was the task of the military, or what was left of it.

Our company was ordered to oversee the escape route at Patona Bridge. It was the first all electrically welded bridge in the world, and many foreigners used to compare its achievement to that of the Eiffel Tower. The city had planned a major restoration project, a dream to renew its former glory. But, like everything else in our country, that dream never came true. Even before the crisis, the bridge had been a nightmare of traffic jams. Now it was crammed with evacuees. The bridge was supposed to be closed to road traffic, but where were the barricades we were promised, the concrete and steel that would have made any forced entry impossible? Cars were everywhere, little Lags and old Zhigs, a few Mercedes, and a mammoth GAZ truck sitting right in the middle, just turned over on its side!