me into the cab of the truck, our rifles banging into the dented door emblazoned with a painted Iron Cross. I moved in next to the grimacing, hatless driver. Uwe slammed in next to me. “Morning,” we both uttered to the driver, who looked straight ahead out the windshield. He told us that his name was Ruediger, he was SS from the
Das Reich
division, had been in a hospital near Spandau recovering from shrapnel wounds until two days ago. The trucks had been picked up last night at an assembly area near Wilhelmstrasse and driven to the Reichsbank in darkness.
Organizing a unit of troops, even experienced ones, can take longer than you think, and I estimate it was fifteen minutes before our convoy groaned to life and began its plodding trajectory down the ruined street, past sentinel rows of silent, yawning facades framing spilled slagheaps of rubble and plumbing. The field car bearing the officer with the sling pulled ahead and led the column. I noticed that a large wooden crate lay heavy in the backseat, another SSofficer beside it armed with a machine pistol and a
Panzer Faust
against tanks. The cabin of our truck was warm and full of fuel fumes and for a while no one spoke.
Our herd of metal beasts headed west, avoiding the network of autobahn. There were two reasons for this, even though the autobahn should have provided the quickest egress from the city. First, months of intense bombing had rendered the highways treacherous, removing their advantage as high-speed avenues of travel. Second, the bombings were increasingly frequent. Any convoy spotted from the air along these wide ribbons of asphalt would fall prey to enemy machines. Accordingly, the officer with the sling directed us through a maze of back streets until we left the Berlin suburbs and then took a series of country roads with the overall direction of southwest. After leaving Berlin by midday, we continued through the flat countryside without pause until evening.
We garrisoned in a small farming village. It was a spectral and boarded-up place, the menfolk off to war and the women doing their best to raise the children and work the land. It was a losing proposition and the faces we encountered were bitter. There was a
gasthof
, which we commandeered, and we enjoined the owner, a woman in her seventies, to break out some bottles of potato schnapps. We paid, of course, but she knew that the currency of the Reich wouldn’t be worth a toss in a month or two.
There was a parish hall in the village and we slept there, our threadbare, coarse military blankets spread on the pinewood floors. It was infinitely better than those times of retreat in Russia when there was no sleep for days. In the morning the noncoms came round and told us where the field kitchen had been set up. Ersatz coffee was provided and we shoved down great gouts of the stuff to release our heads from the final, grasping talons of the previous night’s schnapps.
As we drank our artificial coffee, a gray-haired
Scharrfuehrer
made the rounds and advised us that we could go back to bed or wander around the village as long as we stayed nearby. We would move out at dusk, he said, and added that from now on we would travel onlyduring the hours of darkness until we reached our destination.
“Which is where?” Uwe asked.
“I don’t know where we’re headed anymore than you do,” the
Scharrfuehrer
replied. “My bet is Munich to join with other
Waffen-SS
units to form a Southern Front. But who knows?” He contemplated the ground at his feet for an instant and wandered off.
Uwe and I had noticed the civilians the evening before in the village. There were perhaps a half dozen of them, swathed in expensive cashmere or loden greatcoats. They had been at the bank in Berlin. The clutch of civilians were a quiet lot and they didn’t mingle with the troops or make conversation. Which was fine with me. Years of combat had given me a preference for the company of soldiers.
“I think they’re golden
Das Reich
division, had been in a hospital near Spandau recovering from shrapnel wounds until two days ago. The trucks had been picked up last night at an assembly area near Wilhelmstrasse and driven to the Reichsbank in darkness.
Organizing a unit of troops, even experienced ones, can take longer than you think, and I estimate it was fifteen minutes before our convoy groaned to life and began its plodding trajectory down the ruined street, past sentinel rows of silent, yawning facades framing spilled slagheaps of rubble and plumbing. The field car bearing the officer with the sling pulled ahead and led the column. I noticed that a large wooden crate lay heavy in the backseat, another SSofficer beside it armed with a machine pistol and a
Panzer Faust
against tanks. The cabin of our truck was warm and full of fuel fumes and for a while no one spoke.
Our herd of metal beasts headed west, avoiding the network of autobahn. There were two reasons for this, even though the autobahn should have provided the quickest egress from the city. First, months of intense bombing had rendered the highways treacherous, removing their advantage as high-speed avenues of travel. Second, the bombings were increasingly frequent. Any convoy spotted from the air along these wide ribbons of asphalt would fall prey to enemy machines. Accordingly, the officer with the sling directed us through a maze of back streets until we left the Berlin suburbs and then took a series of country roads with the overall direction of southwest. After leaving Berlin by midday, we continued through the flat countryside without pause until evening.
We garrisoned in a small farming village. It was a spectral and boarded-up place, the menfolk off to war and the women doing their best to raise the children and work the land. It was a losing proposition and the faces we encountered were bitter. There was a
gasthof
, which we commandeered, and we enjoined the owner, a woman in her seventies, to break out some bottles of potato schnapps. We paid, of course, but she knew that the currency of the Reich wouldn’t be worth a toss in a month or two.
There was a parish hall in the village and we slept there, our threadbare, coarse military blankets spread on the pinewood floors. It was infinitely better than those times of retreat in Russia when there was no sleep for days. In the morning the noncoms came round and told us where the field kitchen had been set up. Ersatz coffee was provided and we shoved down great gouts of the stuff to release our heads from the final, grasping talons of the previous night’s schnapps.
As we drank our artificial coffee, a gray-haired
Scharrfuehrer
made the rounds and advised us that we could go back to bed or wander around the village as long as we stayed nearby. We would move out at dusk, he said, and added that from now on we would travel onlyduring the hours of darkness until we reached our destination.
“Which is where?” Uwe asked.
“I don’t know where we’re headed anymore than you do,” the
Scharrfuehrer
replied. “My bet is Munich to join with other
Waffen-SS
units to form a Southern Front. But who knows?” He contemplated the ground at his feet for an instant and wandered off.
Uwe and I had noticed the civilians the evening before in the village. There were perhaps a half dozen of them, swathed in expensive cashmere or loden greatcoats. They had been at the bank in Berlin. The clutch of civilians were a quiet lot and they didn’t mingle with the troops or make conversation. Which was fine with me. Years of combat had given me a preference for the company of soldiers.
“I think they’re golden
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