Peter Idone - Red Vengeance

“The colonel was buying her, then. Was she worth it?” Wilms asked eagerly.

“She had her charms, I suppose.”

“So you did meet her.”

“We were never introduced, but I’d seen her often enough. She possessed a certain opulent rapaciousness. I would drive the lieutenant over to the cottage the colonel had secured for her. Whenever he couldn’t get away, due to a last-minute briefing or staff meeting, he’d send the lieutenant over with a little gift of wine or flowers, maybe hosiery. The usual stuff. There was a fair amount of contact between the woman and the lieutenant, once again to fortify the impression that it was his affair. Nieheus had confided the particulars to me early on. He was a strange personality, the lieutenant. Our relationship as orderly and officer was a little unorthodox. He treated me as a chum, more out of circumstance and proximity than from any sort of affection as a friend or acquaintance. He seemed to strive at being liked, thought well of by both fellow officers and subordinates. He was curious, almost perversely so, about my experiences in the Polish and French campaigns and how I earned the IC second class. He confided in me once, and this was surprising from an officer, that he did not think he could suffer the demands of frontline service and considered himself fortunate to be attached to staff. I told him you don’t ever get used to the front, but somehow you learn to deal with it, you find your own way, but he did not think it possible in his own case.”

“All right, I got all that, now what happened?” Wilms fidgeted about and tried to get comfortable as he leaned against the fuselage wall, careful to keep his feet and the radio dry as more water seeped onto the deck.

“Soon it became quite obvious the lieutenant and the lady were having a fling of their own.”

“Sort of a rearguard action, eh?” Wilms’s imagination was at full speed. He waited expectantly to hear more.

“If you want to use a tactical analogy, yes. They would occupy each other for an hour or more, and afterward Nieheus would return to the car, smelling of alcohol and ‘eau de toilette.’ He would then admonish me to remain discreet. ‘A fellow can really move up the line if he uses discretion,’ he would tell me. Ha! The only place it got me was the Russian front. For all I would have known, the two of them could have been sipping tea, only Nieheus had to share his excitement, no matter how meager the details. Not that I cared to hear it.”

“What did he say? Was she a knock-out in bed?”

“Nothing too explicit, only that she was rather promiscuous and was easily bored.”

“So, infatuated as he was by the lady’s charms, your lieutenant became reckless.”

“Actually, no. Nieheus sampled the dish only when the opportunity afforded itself. He never pined over her or dreamt up transparent excuses to drive over to the cottage. It went on like this for several months, once or twice a week. The colonel found out, eventually.”

“How was that possible, if your lieutenant was such a model of discretion?” Wilms asked.

We are dead men, Angst, dead men. The sound of the lieutenant’s mournful voice echoed in Angst’s ears as he thought back to that time. Wilms had grown impatient with the silence. “Did the mistress give him away?”

“I don’t know how the colonel found out. Maybe she wanted to hurt the colonel for one reason or another, and during a lover’s quarrel, it slipped out. Or the lieutenant might have confided in a fellow officer. If he did, any tittering and sidelong glances would soon end, once the word got around that Nieheus and his orderly were sent packing to the eastern front.”

“I bet it was her that blabbed. Rubbed the colonel’s nose in it, just to show him who was boss in their little arrangement.” If Wilms harbored any suspicions about women of easy virtue, they were now confirmed. He appeared triumphant with his assumption, but he was also disappointed. The story lacked the smutty details and crudeness to make it memorable and worth repeating. “Maybe you were destined for Russia, Angst, either way. Not that it’s any consolation, but the way this war’s going, your colonel and the whole division will end up here sooner or later.”

No, it isn’t a consolation , Angst thought. He looked at his watch. “You had better report in.”

Wilms put on the earphones, flipped the transmit switch, and spoke into the mike. “Out distance calling Sundial, come in, over…this is out distance calling Sundial, do you read me, over…” This continued for several minutes without any response. “That’s odd. I could send and receive fine at the last check-in.”

“We’re not out of range, are we?”

Wilms shook his head and played with the dial in an effort to try another frequency. Angst took up the binoculars and refocused. The mist had become even denser, and except for a gray void, there was nothing to see. The wind had died down, and the sudden stillness and gathering dusk made for an eerie effect.

“Wait a moment…wait a moment…tank patrol. One of ours.” Wilms spoke with urgency. Eyes straining at the binoculars, Angst could not see a thing. Then a blue-white flash appeared within the obscurity and was immediately followed by the muffled crack of cannon fire. He started to describe what he had just witnessed when Wilms silenced him and switched on the radio speaker. Over the buzz of static, distressed commands were shouted. The patrol was in serious trouble as another flash was followed by the sound of a terrific explosion. The shock wave slapped against the port side of the fuselage. The sickening drama could be clearly heard over the radio as panic-stricken voices yelled, cursed, and screamed.

“Behind us! Traverse right!”

“How did it circle around so fast?”

There was another peal of cannon fire. Angst believed he saw the bulk of a machine, for a mere fraction of a second, and then the object dissolved into nothing. The sight through the binoculars remained gray, except for another brilliant flash. Voices over the radio continued to squawk. “Keep firing! Maintain continuous fire!”

“Look out—it’s coming around again. Fire!”

“A direct hit, but how…”

“Fire!”

“My God, why won’t it stop?”

“Kill it! Just kill the fucking thing!”

“Oh, please, God, please—” A wail of utter terror, short, loud, and final. Wilms tore off the earphones and lunged for the binoculars. Almost in a state of genuine grief, he said, “I heard this once before, and I’ll be damned if I have to listen to it all over again!”

Angst understood what the signalman meant. It was the same unmistakable feeling that had occurred on the night the self-propelled assault gun was destroyed. They were reliving the violent, chaotic drama all over again that was uniquely different from all other confrontations; that same strange feeling of something appalling that could not be named. Angst could see the unmistakable profile of a T-34 pierce the veil of mist not more than fifty meters away. Hulking and bestial, it looked like some overfed creature, waddling away from a banquet of flesh. “Red Vengeance,” Angst said in awe.

“How can you say that? We don’t know that for certain.”

“Look at it, Wilms. You know what it is.”

The tank with its shroud of netting geared up to a higher speed and veered south in the direction of the minefield. Good , Angst thought, lose yourself out there, and join the rest of the ruin . Wilms let go of the binoculars and tried to raise the 222 on the radio again, but the interference was too intense. Obstinately, he continued to try.