Peter Idone - Red Vengeance

Spread widely across the steppe, the platoon had marched for several hours when the first signs of fatigue started to creep back. The Pervitin had begun to wear off, but he had to remain alert; they all had to. His thoughts wandered, mainly to the events that brought him to this alien, dangerous place. He blamed Lieutenant Nieheus for his arrogance and stupidity and cursed his own misfortune for having accepted the role as the lieutenant’s orderly. And he prayed that the very worst would befall Colonel Heinrich, the division Aide-de-camp ; because of that officer’s vanity and petty cruelty, he now found himself in the inextricable situation he’d been thrust into. How long had it been since he and the lieutenant had received their orders, in a most unorthodox, even melodramatic fashion? Angst figured the date tonight was the eighth or ninth of September. He made an attempt at counting back the days but got lost. He could well remember that oppressive evening in mid-July when the telephone rang. He’d been tidying up the lieutenant’s quarters. Nieheus took the call, and after he hung up, an unsettled mood came over him. They were to expect the arrival of the colonel within minutes, and both he and Angst were to accompany him: reason and destination unknown. Nieheus tried to shrug it off. Probably some exercise or staff meeting. The atmosphere at division headquarters had become unbearable lately. The Americans had recently landed in southern Italy, and the Kursk offensive, Operation Citadel in Russia, was not proving to be as successful as one would have hoped. In fact, word circulated it was a disaster. All the staff officers were in a foul mood, wondering if the division was to be packed up and shipped off to Mother Russia to make up, if only in part, for the appalling losses suffered at Kursk. A posting in France was too comfortable to be reassigned from.

The staff car arrived. Large and black, it reminded Angst of a hearse. Behind the wheel was Sergeant Kortner, an NCO with a reputation for brutality. He had never before been the colonel’s driver. Both Angst and the lieutenant knew that whatever the colonel had in store for them both it wasn’t good, perhaps not the specifics as to what would occur, but certainly the reason as to why they were summoned—or abducted. The back door of the staff car opened slowly, and Nieheus got in. Angst was made to sit up front with the NCO. They drove in silence for several minutes, and then the lieutenant asked if there was an emergency of some kind. “The Americans haven’t landed on the coast, I pray?” Nieheus asked, lightheartedly. Coldly, the colonel told him to keep his mouth shut. There was no denying what this fateful rendezvous with the colonel signified. This was personal. A mortally silent tension enveloped the car for the duration of the trip.

Kortner drove for another twenty minutes, then he turned down a narrow dirt road that wound its way through a pinewood. He stopped at a clearing and gruffly ordered Angst and the lieutenant out of the car. Nieheus started to protest to the colonel for allowing a sergeant to order a superior about, and in such a rude fashion. “The sergeant’s rudeness is the very least of your worries,” the colonel said, and had the lieutenant lead the way to the far side of the clearing. They disappeared in the dark. Kortner ordered Angst to remain outside the car and stand at attention. He lit a cigarette and paced back and forth, seemingly bored with the routine. There were better things he could be doing, like drinking beer and playing cards, or boxing the ears of some new recruit. The woods were stifling, Angst remembered, and the smell of pine pitch strong. Sweat oozed copiously from every pore. Angst believed the colonel had led Nieheus into the woods to shoot him, and he himself would be next. Droplets of perspiration ran down his forehead and into his eyes. It stung. Quickly, he wiped his face while the sergeant’s back was turned. He thought he’d gotten away with it when, suddenly, Kortner turned and pounced. Centimeters from his own, Kortner’s face was sharp and cold, like a climber’s ice ax. He threatened to strangle Angst then and there, should he even blink. Angst had no reason not to believe him. After a while, the colonel returned, alone. Kortner opened the rear door, and Heinrich sat stiffly in the rear seat, expressionless. Kortner climbed back in behind the wheel and started the engine. Angst, who remained at attention the whole time, was summoned to the window. He leaned over slightly. “Look after your lieutenant,” the colonel said. Angst saluted, and the staff car drove away. Angst went in search of Nieheus. It was dark, but he was able to find his way toward the officer simply by listening. He could hear a plaintive whimpering, like the sound of a chastised puppy. He found the lieutenant seated on the trunk of a fallen tree. “We are dead men, corporal, dead men,” the lieutenant said, as Angst came upon him. From that day forward, those words rang like a bell toll inside Angst’s brain. Nieheus turned over a sheaf of papers. “Our new orders, corporal.” Grief was evident in the lieutenant’s voice. “I have volunteered for duty at the eastern front, and you, as the loyal and dutiful orderly that you are, have elected to accompany me.”

Angst thumbed the striker on a cigarette lighter and using the small flame for illumination, sifted rapidly through the stamped documents, travel passes, and signed orders. Their names were typed on transfer requests, with the ink bearing the colonel’s signature still wet. There wasn’t much time. The enclosed itinerary had them leaving early in the morning. They had to walk all the way back to camp and then pack their gear. The predicament had yet to sink in, Angst remembered. He was gleeful just to be still alive.

“There is no appealing this sentence, Angst,” the lieutenant said, as they began the long walk back to camp. “From this moment on, we are merely simulating the characteristics of the living. Understand that we are dead men.”

At 0800 hours the following morning, exhausted from the walk, having gotten no sleep, laden with equipment and every conceivable personal effect that would be essential for the cruel hardships of Russia, they boarded the train—a troop and supply train filled with strangers bound to points east. No one saw them off or wished them well. Across the length of France and into Germany—perhaps the most depressing part of the trip, as far as Angst was concerned, with no hope of seeing his parents or sister, maybe not ever again. He would have to write them and couch his misfortune in an upbeat, almost nonchalant phraseology and post the letter somewhere en route. Mother would be grief-stricken and worry herself sick but be proud, nonetheless. His father would react with anger upon the news; he would be angry with the Reich, the party, and the Fuehrer, but especially angry with his fellow countrymen for allowing themselves to be swindled by the people who now ruled Germany. He would bear this anger in silence, because there was no one to listen, certainly not his mother.

Over the years, Angst had become his father’s entire audience as he ranted on in a hushed voice in the cellar or the small garage, out of hearing from possible eavesdroppers and touts, as he carried on about the shabby little corporal and his gang of thieves. Mother had already forbidden him any further outspokenness in her presence, or anyone else’s, for that matter. His father could wind up in jail and the rest of the family as well. Politics had become the single biggest rift between his parents. His mother believed in the Germany National Socialism was attempting to create and, as a personality, the Fuehrer had chastely seduced her, as he had the majority of good, wholesome German frauen . But not Volker Angst. The smooth beer garden server had more than his share of dealings with mid- and low-level party functionaries who, in his estimation, “couldn’t use a urinal properly without instructions written on the wall.” Whether getting his nose broken by a storm trooper while trying to stop a brawl in an establishment where he worked had any influence on his opinions was subject to debate. That had happened in the early days, and his father could see then what was coming. He could only shake his head in wonder at how an entire population could accept being yelled at, screamed at, and browbeaten at party rallies and radio broadcasts. That was no way to communicate to grownups, he would complain. And the swine would applaud him for it. That was the worst. Herr Angst could never be enraptured or mesmerized by the speeches. He was insulted by the glaring abnormality. “Drink the right amount of cold beer every day,” his father would say, “and it helps clarify a man’s perception.” His father, being an avid fan of the beverage which he served, this remark, Angst supposed, predicated his father’s political and social insight. Often enraged and insulted by the maniacal chancellor—and drunk—he would begin to rant, and his wife would beg in anger and tears for his father to keep silent. He would quiet down, finally, but Angst knew the self-imposed silence would eventually kill him.