John Ringo: Watch on the Rhine

Hans looked around the combat cocoon. Every man turned a questioning face towards him. We have followed you to the end. Now there is nothing more to do. What now, commander?

Hans turned his own face from his followers, put on his VR helmet, and said, “ Anna , situation map please, strategic situation.”

“Yes, Herr Oberst ,” the tank answered, and it seemed to Hans there was a deep yet inexpressible sadness in the artificial voice. Perhaps that was merely because the tank’s words were filtered through Hans’ own, weary and hopeless, mind.

The enemy suddenly appeared on the map Anna ’s VR placed before Hans’ eyes, a great red splotch covering Germany from Munich to Hamburg. A thin, irregular line of blue remained at the passes into the Bavarian and Swiss Alps and in Schleswig-Holstein. This line represented the last holdouts among the defenders. All the rest who had not found secure flanks in the mountains were even now drowning under the alien tide.

Passing through the blue line, even as its rear was being overwhelmed and engulfed by the red tide, were the last fleeing million of civilians, showing on the VR map as evaporating pools of green.

“ Anna , end image.”

Hans’ removed his VR helmet and turned his attention back to the crew. “There is nothing more most of you can do. Schultz, Harz, grab your bags and go. Find safety in the north.”

Both Dieter and Rudi began to object, but Hans silenced them. “Just go, gentlemen. Your country , which is more than a collection of fields and hills and towns and rivers, needs you alive. Find wives; raise families. Bring up sons as good and brave as yourselves, sons that will someday take our homeland back for us. And if you would be so good as to take my hand as you leave…”

With similar words, similar handshakes, Hans dismissed all the crew, one by one and two by two, until only he and Krueger were left. Krueger kept his vision carefully fixed on his driver’s screen, hoping the commander would find no more use for him and would release him to flee for safety.

But Hans just sat silent in his command chair, his hand stroking a little packet in his left breast pocket, his eyes staring at Krueger’s back.

Outside of the tank, Schultz and Harz joined the swelling stream of refugees and scraps of units retreating to the north. It was a sight they had seen too many times before. Yet familiarity had not dulled the pain of watching old men and women struggling to keep ahead of the alien hordes, had never accustomed them to the sight of hungry mothers pushing and leading hungry children for some distant, hoped for, safety.

“We should go back,” said Schultz. “No matter what the commander says, he should not be left to die alone. And I am ashamed to be running with these people when we should be standing on the line and fighting to give them half a chance.” Dieter turned to go back when Harz’s restraining hand gripped his shoulder.

Krueger started when he first felt Brasche’s hand on his shoulder. The commander had made no sound in his approach, had made no sound since releasing the last other member of the crew.

“It is just you and I left now, Sergeant Major Krueger, just the old SS. It’s fitting, don’t you think, that we who were there at the first should also be there at the last?”

What is this fucking maniac talking about? thought Krueger. I don’t want to be anywhere at the last. I don’t want there to even be a “last” for me. And what is this friendly tone? We both know we detest each other.

Sensing that the sergeant major would make no answer, Hans removed the hand and walked, no longer trying to be silent, back to his command chair.

“Where you there at the first, Sergeant Major?” Hans asked.

“I was SS from 1938 on, yes, Herr Oberst .”

“Really?” asked Hans, conversationally. “I looked over your record of course, when you were assigned to me. It indicated only that you served with Totenkopf Division from 1942 onward. What did you do before then?”

“ Sonderkommando, Einsatzgruppe C, Totenkopfverbaende . [50] Leave it suffice that these were the formations that did most of the really ugly work behind lines on the Eastern Front. The Totenkopfverbaende , Death’s Head Bands, ran the camps. Then I pissed someone off and was sent to the front,” Krueger answered.

“ Totenkopfverbaende ?” Hans queried. “In the camps?”

“Yes, Ravensbrück,” the sergeant major said.

“Ah. I was never there, though I did do a very short time at Birkenau. I had a dear friend who was at Ravensbrück. Tell me, Sergeant Major, were the women there really as pliable as all that?”

Krueger didn’t answer. Instead he asked, “Are you going to let me go?”

Dieter attempted to shrug off Harz’s iron grip. “Let me go,” he demanded. “I am going back.”

“No, damn you, you are not going back! If I have to deck you and carry you out over my shoulder you are going to follow the commander’s last orders: run, live, breed, return and fight for our country again.”

“But I don’t want to do any of those things,” Dieter said, simply. “Maybe if Gudrun were still alive…” The sentence drifted off, unfinished.

“And it does not matter a whit what you want , old son. What matters is where your duty lies. And it does not lie in getting killed to no purpose. Would your Gudrun want that, do you think?”

“But why would you want to go, Sergeant Major? Isn’t this what you always dreamed of, a final Götterdämmerung ?”

“Maybe that is your dream, Herr Oberst . It has never been mine. I enjoy life too much to want to throw it away.”

Seeing the confusion on Dieter’s face, Harz pressed on that point. “Don’t you think she would want you to live? I saw her face, friend, that one night. She was in love with you; don’t you ever doubt it. She would want you to live… and be happy.”

“You are happy with your life then, Sergeant Major? You are happy with yourself?”

“Why should I not be?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Hans. “I find that I have rarely been so. Though there was a time…”

Behind him, Krueger heard the sound of cloth ripping, of stitches being torn. Still he did not turn around. There was something to be feared in the commander’s tone of voice now, something he could not quite put a finger to. There was an edge, perhaps, to the commander’s words, some bitter undertone.

“I was always under someone’s orders, you see, Sergeant Major, all the time of my youth unto my later manhood. Never my choice. Never my will. And there was only the one person, gone now, who’s will actually meant more to me than my own.”

“Now, however, I find I am free.”

Locked in place as if by chains, though the chains binding him were moral rather than physical, Schultz simply stood in place with his head hanging.

What an easy thing it would be, he thought, to return to the tank and fight and die. Never to feel the loss of a loved one again. Never to have to worry about my mother and father, or my sister. Maybe even, if the priests were right, to find my Gudrun again. How sweet and easy and attractive going back would be.

How cowardly it would be. Krueger, for all he was a bastard, made me tougher than that. And Oberst Brasche, too, showed me the way of duty and courage that comes from inside. Krueger would despise me for taking the easy way. But Brasche would be disappointed in me and that would be worse.