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"Did you see that, Sir? An old man and a kid, how are they supposed to stop Ivan?"
Oberleutnant Krausse had indeed seen the two uniformed figures in the slit trench by the road. Old men and boys, no rifles, no machine guns, just that one shot Panzerfaust to try and stop the Red Army.
If they survived the initial artillery bombardment, something the Soviets were fond of, then maybe, just maybe, they might kill a single tank. After that they would be slaughtered by the Soviet infantry, they didn't stand a chance.
"Sir?"
"What is it, Manfred?"
"Why are we still fighting?"
"Do you think we should just lay down our arms? Do you think the Allies, especially the Russians, will just let us go home? Perhaps if we said we were heartily sorry, maybe then we'd be all right?"
Tryb blushed, "You know damned well what I mean."
Krausse didn't answer for a moment, he looked back over his shoulder at his battalion. Three hundred men, give or take, many of the men were draftees, the average age was 19. There were one or two veterans in each company, those were less than platoon strength now.
"We're fighting for our homes now. Germany is lost, perhaps the enemy will break the country up like Goebbels claims.¹ Maybe we'll go back to the way things were before the Kaisers. Saxony, Bavaria, Hesse and the like, but there won't be any Prussia, you can bet on that. No doubt we'll be occupied for decades, if not forever. We have everything to lose."
"What is there to gain?" Tryb asked.
"I don't know, Manfred. We fight until we're ordered to stop."
"Or until we are killed."
"There is that, yes."
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The old man listened for a moment, his hearing wasn't as good as it used to be. Then he heard it, well, he felt the ground shaking first. "Red Army armor, Junge. They'll be here soon enough, I'm surprised we weren't shelled first."
Even as he said that, the first artillery rounds began to impact around their positions.
The sound was unbelievable, no single explosion could be distinguished, it was a constant roar of high explosives detonating. The ground shook as if it were alive and in agony. It felt like the earth wished to throw them into the air where the hot steel fragments would then eviscerate them.
The old man remembered his own youth, the Western Front in 1918. The artillery had given him nightmares for years. He was almost deaf in one ear from a nearby explosion in those days. He was shaking with terror, his nightmares had come back to fill his waking moments.
The artillery stopped, the old man's ears were ringing and everything seemed muffled. He remembered where he was and poked his head up out of the trench. Russian T-34s and infantry, a lot of both from what he could see.
"Okay, Junge, remember what you were taught, you take the T-34 on the right, I'll take the one to the left of that. Okay?"
He got no answer, well, maybe he couldn't hear the answer, so he turned to his young companion.
Willi Möller was laying at the bottom of the trench, his eyes glassy and unfocused. The old man leaned down and grabbed him by the front of his tunic.
"Willi! Willi!"
The boy didn't have a mark on him, but the old man had seen it before, no doubt the boy had been killed by concussion. That nearby blast that had almost thrown him out of the trench but had left him unharmed. The boy had absorbed the entire blast.
"Damn it."
The T-34 sounded very close now, the old man took a deep breath, then flipped the sight up on his Panzerfaust. He then stood up, the weapon tucked under his arm.
He aligned the sight with the top of the warhead, lining it up on the Soviet tank not 30 meters away. He pressed the lever down and heard the whoosh of the propellent as the warhead sped on its way.
It was the last thing he heard as the Soviet infantry escorting the T-34 immediately opened fire on the old man.
¹ A plan proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to eliminate the possibility of Germany ever rising again. The Nazis heard of it and Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda used it to convince the country to fight to the last.
Author's Note: Okay Scott, so it wasn't a "one off," more of a mini-series outside the main novel.
Still, a tragedy in a single page. You have an undoubted talent.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Scott.
DeletePhotos reinforce the writing Sarge, a country involved twice on the losing side in two world wars .....maybe there'll be consequences? Second Scott's post.
ReplyDeleteLosers always face consequences.
DeleteThe Off Ramp of an oncoming war or an ongoing war is often impossible and thus deadly to soldiers, civilians and society.
ReplyDeleteA grim well told story. I wonder if you'll use the pig farmer to tell us about post war Germany. Chaos, suffering, gangs, rape and murder is what my family memoirs told me about.
That last bit might happen. I need to do the research.
DeleteOddly I am blessed with a neighbor of mine that married an ex-Soviet Union lady. Seems the economic collapse of the old USSR had some of the same results at the personal level as recorded in my German family memoirs. Just add burned out buildings and lack of food and energy to keep the shattered homes warm. Lack of a effective government leads to smaller government "startups" like gangs.
DeleteAlmost like some blue cities in America. At least that's the observation of that ex-Soviet lady when she had to visit Baltimore MD for business.
Those who lived through such a thing are far better observers than our own "useful idiots."
DeleteSmaller government start-up, nice turn of phrase Michael!
I don't think I've ever read about the immediate problems of post war Germany, and never "Chaos, suffering, gangs, rape and murder". Actually all I've ever read about post was Germany is fiction, spy stories and other novels.
DeleteIt's something that no one wrote about in the West. I suppose that no one had any sympathy for the Germans in those days.
DeleteI wonder when the war time "problems" ended for the people in Germany? I guess it wasn't 1945...
DeleteRob, I also do not wonder that even as the war was ending, the US and Europe were already moving on to The Cold War. That, and possibly given the end of the war, German civilians may not have been at the top of everyone's concern list - except, of course, as a buttress to the Soviet Union.
DeleteRob - Right around the start of the Cold War for West Germany, right about November 1989 for East Germany.
DeleteTB - The vast numbers of displaced persons (as they were termed at the time) made the Germans' distress a rather low priority.
DeleteAnother great vignette, Sarge. We need to remember these are/were people; at least those who hadn't descended to some other state.
ReplyDeleteBoat Guy
People trying to survive in the most hideous of contexts - war.
DeleteOoof. In the midst of life we are dead. Well told.
ReplyDeleteIt happens.
DeleteYeah, telling your enemy exactly what you'll do when you win isn't exactly the best thing to do. One of the reasons for issues in the Pacific, too.
ReplyDeleteFunny, though, Henry's wishes, though not his actual plan, has come to fruition. I don't think Germany at this time can defend herself against Libya, let alone a revived Russia.
People have counted the Germans out before, don't be too sure. Russia couldn't even beat the Czech Republic at this time.
DeleteWell told, sir. I like these "story for the day" as much as "the next installment of an endless tale." We have the end here.
ReplyDeleteJB
Sometimes it's nice to have a quick series which has a defined start and end.
DeleteSarge, this reminds me of a series of scenes from "The Last Days of Hitler" (at least, I think that is what it is called), where the Hitler's Youth are building an anti-tank redoubt in the middle of the street. At one point - if I recall correctly, after Hitler's suicide - one of them, a young woman commits suicide. Whether due to realizing it is the end or to avoid what was undoubtedly coming at the hands of the Soviets, it remains the scene I remember the most.
ReplyDeleteWhat the Red Army did to conquered Germany was and still is a vast collection of war crimes.
DeleteOf course, Nazi Germany definitely discovered the meaning behind 'FAFO.'
TB - Are you thinking of Downfall? That scene was typical in the path of the Soviets.
DeleteBeans - Most wars are a succession of war crimes.
DeleteSarge - Yup, that is the one (leave it to me to invent a title when this new-fangled InterWeb can look it up for me).
DeleteTo be fair, the whole movie was haunting (and well done).
Don't feel too bad, I do that all the time!
DeleteThe girl's name was Gretel. Earlier in the movie, when the father of one of the HJ comes and tells his to leave now, and go home. He tells the rest of the kids the same thing, pointing out that one FLAK 18 vs the Russian Army, can only result in all of their deaths. Gretel replies to the father that they promised The Furher that they would defend Berlin to the last man. It seems to me that if one of the gun bunnies is named Gretel, you have reached that point, and beyond.
DeleteYup.
DeleteEven here, immediately after the end, things didn't return to what some call normal. Many of the inconveniences remained for some years afterward.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed, it takes time to come out of "war mode." The politicians hate ceding their control of things.
DeleteMy first CO in the Navy was a member of the Hitler Youth. His family was on the last ship out of Riga ahead of the advancing Red Army. He was an interesting man.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt he had stories.
Delete