Peter Idone - Red Vengeance

“Is that your only answer, then?”

“No! My answer to you is this: the might and will of the Soviet people will throw you Hitlerite criminals out of our motherland, and the war won’t end there. We will do to your country, in your cities and towns, and to your people the same as you have done to us. Someday all Germans will know what Red Vengeance truly means.”

Rather than be provoked to anger by the crewman’s words, Falkenstein was merely disappointed. He expected to garner some useful bit of information, however minute, instead of the drunken ideological parroting of Bolshevik propaganda. “Khan…”

A look of alarm crossed the Russian’s face. Khan raised the knife and waited for the slight nod from the captain that would cause it to fall. “Can’t kill me by your own hand, German? Instead, you let this treacherous swine do your dirty work!”

The sarcastic tone bit a little too deeply. Falkenstein removed the short-barreled PPK from the pocket of his riding coat, pointed it at the crewman’s temple, and pulled the trigger. The man keeled over, uneventfully, as tufts of helmet padding floated listlessly to the sodden ground. Falkenstein spoke to the dead crewman, who lay on the ground like an overturned sack of grain. “I am not a cruel man…only impatient.”

The fields had since turned to ash, and the houses, barns, and outbuildings had been reduced to piles of charred rubble. Islands of dead cattle, bloated and rotting, dotted the scorched land. The steppe was empty and the prevailing silence dreadful. A few of the stragglers from the night before were able to tag along, which was not difficult to do as the Hanomag drove slowly through the mud. Two dispossessed infantrymen had wormed their way into the crew compartment, a gloomy dark-haired fellow, Bruno, and Mueller, a youth of no more than eighteen. They had crouched on the deck by the doors and remained quiet and innocuous, as if their presence would thus go unnoticed. It did not matter to the crew, as they were too wet and exhausted to care. Three grenadiers from the same unit stood on the mudguard fenders and held on for the long ride. As for the rest of the panicked mob, there were noticeably fewer at dawn. Some lagged too far behind as they attempted to negotiate the mud and others had struck out on their own. Many simply remained lost, probably forever.

The command vehicle sloughed along a kilometer to the rear, and visual contact was finally established a short time after dawn. Voss was not inclined to signal the captain and ask if he needed assistance, and the captain did not radio any inquires to the armored carrier. This arrangement, temporary as it was, suited Voss just fine; it afforded him the opportunity to recoup his strength, now that he was out from under the captain’s oppressive personality. Veranovka lay half a kilometer further to the west when Voss had the vehicle stop so he could examine the site. What he observed through binoculars, he did not like. A makeshift gallows had been erected on the outskirts of the repair depot east of the railroad tracks. Five men, three women, and a boy hung, hands bound behind their backs. The boy’s age was difficult to determine, and the only clue that he was not an adult was that he was shorter than the others. Exposed to the weather overnight, perhaps longer, rain-soaked clothing clung tightly to the corpses, which had begun to swell. The colorless flesh of exposed arms and feet stood in gruesome contrast to the purple discoloration of their faces. Voss lowered the binoculars and ordered Hartmann to advance. Despite the crew’s exhaustion and discomfort, they found it impossible not to look and, if not feel pity, at least express an interest as to what crimes they had committed to earn such a final and lasting sentence. “Partisans,” said Schroeder. “Or looters,” Wilms said.

Theoretically, the town lay within the sterilization zone, that twenty-kilometer band of destruction and lifelessness that was to aid the withdrawal and slow the Russian advance. The track wolves had since torn up the rail lines, but the buildings and structures that comprised the depot had yet to be leveled. As the armored personnel carrier made its approach toward the heart of the town, most of the houses that flanked the dirt road were either completely burnt to the ground or severely damaged by fire. Veranovka had the feel of a ghost town, the emptiness that follows the violence of ransacking: the valueless, unwanted objects and bric-a-brac that littered the grounds from looted homes and buildings. Telephone and power line poles had been cut down, porcelain insulators shattered, and the jumble of cables lay twisted and coiled over the ground like an intrusion of vines. A signpost lay broken in the mud at the railroad crossing. Written in both German and Cyrillic letters, the sign read “Old Cart Road.” Voss ordered the vehicle to stop and again raised the binoculars. He gestured, and Schroeder took his position at the bow machine gun. “What is it, Lieutenant?” Hartmann asked. He nudged Reinhardt, who had fallen asleep in the co-driver’s seat. With a snort he opened his eyes.

The project of ruination had yet to be completed, as a motley outfit still occupied the town. A Ukrainian auxiliary police squad was attempting to wreak more destruction, but its efforts seemed quite haphazard. The auxiliaries’ actions reminded Voss of the raucous behavior of schoolboys in a play yard. “They’re ours,” he informed the crew, and had Hartmann continue. The road led directly into the town square, where several lorries, an open-topped staff car, and a number of motorcycles with sidecars were parked. Among these vehicles was where the lead core of this indigenous paramilitary unit remained, the Einsatzgruppen , who appeared eager to move out. Huddled in the rear seat of the staff car was an SS Sturmbannfuehrer . The Hanomag stopped, and Schmidt opened the doors and got out. Mueller and Bruno followed, and the infantrymen hanging onto the outside of the vehicle jumped down. The crew needed to stretch and start to dry out in the scant sunlight that was available. Before Voss could say a word, the auxiliaries started to surround the vehicle. Obviously drunk—several brandished bottles of vodka, some had schnapps, others wine—each toted a submachine gun or rifle and waved these weapons around as freely as their bottles. It was a dangerous mix. Descending upon the crew, the auxiliaries greeted them with loutish comradeship. They began to climb onto the vehicle and peer over the siding with dull-witted inquisitiveness at what was stored inside the crew compartment. Voss and Reinhardt were on edge and too short-tempered from fatigue to put up with any harassment, no matter how good-natured the intentions. The auxiliaries sensed the hostility and began to talk loudly, even yell, and gesticulate wildly. The mood was beginning to sour quickly. They became interested in the fuel cans lashed to the sides and front end and started to untie the ropes. Voss shouted at them to stop. One policeman had climbed into the crew compartment and was rooting around in the stowage lockers. When he handled the flamethrower, Schroeder hustled him unceremoniously off the vehicle. A Sturmmann and two SS Obersoldaten strolled over, genuinely amused at the panzergrenadiers’ predicament. Exasperated, Voss called out to them, “Can’t you control this mob?”

“They’re drunk,” said the Sturmmann, as he and the Obersoldaten began to herd the auxiliaries away from the vehicle.

“I can see that they’re drunk,” Voss replied. “What do they want from us?”

“Gasoline to burn down the rest of town. They started on the workers’ settlement, but the wood was too wet. They ran out of fuel.”