Matthew Funk
Death Generation
In the tattered, teenage ranks of a 1945 SS
battalion,
no one’s cooler than the corpses.
Matthew
Funk
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CHAPTER ONE – ROCHERATH
For a kilometer west the forest rises. The trees tighten together here, clustering and
growing yet taller, as if squeezed into the sky. The
light under them is choked out, smothering the line of sight down to only twenty-five,
twenty meters. And under the light, the dark
ground is a snarl of roots, weeds, crabgrass – all the foliage the sub-zero
temperatures have not yet killed, but have made lean, tough and bitter. The undergrowth is laced thick with the mud of the
forest. Thicker still than the undergrowth is
the mud, beginning to freeze. The mud holds
fast as cement to anything that enters it. Somewhere
before the end of the forest, the first American line waits for us in the ground.
If they are in
platoon strength, they will be dug into the mud, four men in a position spread in a belt
across the forest every fifty yards. If they
are in company strength, they will be dug in with a base of three positions holding a
rifle squad each, spaced 75 meters wide, with two holes behind, fifty meters apart,
holding a machinegun and the platoon command post. Whatever
their strength, they will be in 25 meters of light, in a snare of undergrowth, in the
concrete mud. They will be waiting for us.
“Do you have to be so technical, then?”
Hans uncapped his pen as he turned to look over his shoulder at Jann, who was leaning, head on crossed arms, on the back of his chair. Hans made sure to catch the fellow’s nimble eyes in his own before he slashed the pen across the last line he’d typed in his report. Whether he noticed or not, Jann smirked, narrowing the sharp angles of his face to match the jagged Sig runes on his collar tab.
“It’s an engineering report on the battlefield dispositions of the enemy.” Hans tried to hold onto what sobriety and concentration he had in the face of Jann’s keen, defiant humor. It was hard like staring into the sun was hard, especially with his friend’s elfish face only inches away. He ended up turning away, bowing back to the typewriter, so that he wouldn’t be seen breaking into a grin. It wouldn’t have been right, considering the circumstances.
Captain Ott was
having a hard enough time trying to gather his officers’ attention besides, Hans
thought. For all the close quarters of the
briefing room – a former sculptor’s studio in a
“Yeah, but it’s a report for him.” Jann didn’t have to point for Hans to know he meant the captain.
“Then division artillery will give the villages that are our objectives – that’s Rocherath and Krinkelt, pretty much the same village, just side by side, no break between ‘em – they’ll get a pasting from division artillery, the heavy stuff and the mediums, and…” Ott went on, and the first few rows of benches, from what Hans could see, were doing their best to look attentive. The officers of the 25th SS Panzergrenadier’s 1st Battalion sat upright, like a tree line in their field dress of speckled earth tones and smoke. But behind them, where officer ranks turned into NCOs, and then into enlisted, the pretense of attention toppled abruptly. Seven rows back, where Hans sat trying to rush his report on the ground his company would be attacking over into completion, the briefing room seemed to become a beer hall.
He could hardly blame them. It would have been different once, surely, but these days Hans measured all things – his actions and others, mundane and miracle – by the measure of duty. And it was not his duty to scorn the ranks for not listening while the Captain talked of fire support and ammunition loads. If anything, it was to the contrary.
Many of the men were new, and many of the new men, excited by the prospect of going into battle for the first time, couldn’t help but talk. Perhaps it would have been different with more sober a crowd or with a division with more of a stately tradition, but this was not the 1st SS Panzer Division or the 3rd SS Panzer Division, this was the 12th SS Panzer Division – the Hitler Youth Division. The officers may have been selected from the ranks of the grim Lifeguard but the men, Hans included, were not far removed from the camping trips and raucous gatherings of that youth organization. They had always been loud, bold and funny when they had gathered together; why should this be no different? Because doom was so close, so close they could feel its fingers on their pulse? Many of them had joined out of a sense of destiny – of glory and doom – it was as familiar to them as trail thirst, songs and sunrises; it thrived in all of these things, and they breathed it in deep. The HJ used as much breath as they could laughing at it and revering it and pulling it in, forcing it to inhabit them next to their quick hearts. And if this was to be their last of that breath, they’d use it while they could.
Duty did not compel Hans to understand and accept this. Affinity, if anything, did that. He was only nine years out of the Hitler Youth; less than six counting his time as a volunteer leader and contributor. But duty, a force he was arduously trying to raise to a place higher than affinity before battle tested their place within him, made him understand why the veterans were not listening. Duty made him respect their dull disinterest like a live weapon.
A veteran sat
beside him – Renner, the 3rd Squad leader – a survivor of the
“You know, I don’t know which I miss the most,” the soldier flexed his forearm, making the chain of crude olive leaves inked into it shiver, “but I remember each one – each one, I remember marking me.”
And though it seemed everyone in earshot, even Jann, was looking over as the black-and-blue vine swayed, Hans noticed Renner was not looking at anything. His eyes were open, but the light there was gone, the glass stained shut. His hands were open and his mouth closed. He sat in the noise of the room like a stone in a flood.
“They go for that?” One soldier challenged the tattooed one. “Shoot.”
“Sure, every one.” His fingertips tripped over each leaf’s curve. “Especially after. They want it. They want it bad.”
Hans was watching Renner. He would not go back to typing until he noticed the man breathe. From his left hand, Renner shifted a zippo lighter into his right, but still Hans was not certain he was alive.
“Shoot. I bet,” said the soldier, shaking his smiling head.
Renner sighed.
It is over a kilometer and a half from the end of the
forest to the twin villages of Rocherath and Krinkelt.
This ground rises gradually for the first kilometer, then steep, placing the
villages on a dominating ridge. It is bare
ground, open land and farm fields, laced by two tight roads leading to either side of the
ridge. When the roads near the town, they
unravel into a web of smaller dirt tracks and farm routes.
The course into the villages is a crude circuit, with several intersections
and dead ends. Traveling by road over this
ground means often twisting back on one’s path around sharp, hedge-flanked turns. Traveling otherwise means traveling over a lake of
mud, recent weather soaking it through to a depth of fifteen inches. All travel is under
the eyes of Rocherath and Krinkelt. From their ridge, all movement can be seen.
“What’s your name, troop?” Jann’s yell to the tattooed soldier brought Hans out of his report. He glanced back and forth from grinning soldier to the page in his typewriter, but the words were a meaningless mash of black and white.
“Eh?” said the soldier. “Ah, Herder. Simon Herder.”
“I think you’re full of shit, Herder.” Jann leaned in, showing off his shoulder insignia and smile to full effect. Hans noticed Renner’s eyes snap to the side, but Jann failed to, his whole attention fixed on the deflation of Herder’s face. The senior squad leader’s eyes remained lodged in their corners, hard and tight – all of him had gone hard and tight, like Jann’s words had turned his blood to wood.
“I think you’ve done them all yourself on lazy Sundays.”
One of Herder’s mates popped open a small paper box he’d been fingering with and began to eat raisins out of it. Quick, one at a time, he made the little black bits vanish. Hans recognized the kid at once – Graubens – he got the tiny boxes from his uncle in waxpaper packages of forty at a time. And at once Hans envied him; craving hit him like an electric shock. He set his hands on the typewriter, tried to keep his stare off Renner, and watched the conversation.
“Every one’s got a name and a story.” Herder said, shrugging shoulders and smile. “Every one – what can I say?”
“Yeah, your name,” and Jann grinned back, popping a piece of fuse into his mouth to dangle between his teeth. “And a lot of lonely stories.”
“Ain’t your place to say though, is it?” Herder’s squad mates all shrank away from him while nodding; Jann was leaning in, tapping his shoulder board. But it was Renner, almost yelling, who spoke up first.
“Isn’t your place, Stormtrooper Herder.” Renner turned to snarl at his squad, and they all straightened to listen. “Speak properly if you’re going to bother at all.”
“And it’s always a sergeant’s place to say, Herder.” Jann said. He pulled out the fuse and snapped it at the watchful squad. “That’s why God made non-comms.”
For a short
while, there was just the Captain’s voice again, and Jann settling back while Herder
dejectedly rolled down his sleeve. Hans turned
back to his typewriter, but only for show – he could feel Renner fuming beside him,
slowly settling in the silence, settling like smoke. Hans
found it difficult to understand the older man’s obsession with diction but found it
impossible to ignore when it was smoldering like this.
He’d heard from Klezmer, the platoon’s unofficial intercom, gossip
trader and historian, that Renner had been a teacher once, even that he’d coached the
sons and daughters of Counts in elocution. But
there was something more basic, more brutal to Renner’s critical anger than could be
explained by what came before the war. Just as
what came before couldn’t survive Renner’s war, the crude, cruel core of Renner’s
intolerance towards improper grammar couldn’t have been born in better circumstances. Only in
He wondered how many fires he’d see those days; how many people he’d see burn, break apart or simply fall still. Almost at once he scolded himself for wondering; told himself to listen to the captain instead. He’d listen to the speech, forget Renner – forget the strange questions he inspired and the stranger answers he suggested. The answers the Captain provided made more sense.
“We’ll advance in echelon up to the middle of the forest sections, then do the breaks by the numbers. There are three firebreaks between the two roads into town, that means four sections of forest, and I’m figuring the Amis to have a line in each of those. Along with what’s left of our neighbors, the 12th People’s Grenadiers Regiment, I’m going to send a platoon against each of those lines – but we’ll do it in echelon.
“Right flank goes first.” The Captain tapped a diagram he’d charted on some old wrapping paper, still spattered with clay stains, making the chart even more indistinct. “When they break through, they turn left and, with the next platoon, hit the American line from both sides. We do this until the forest’s clear.
“In the meantime, 1st Platoon under Captain…”
“Ruth, we are ready to go,” muttered a soldier behind Hans. Hans turned around, already feeling refreshed by the break in listening to the briefing. Willing as he was to accept being transferred from the engineers into a combat role, listening too closely to the planning of combat operations made him rotten with anxiety. Perhaps, Hans figured, it was because of his many years in the engineers – he had dealt with specifics there, with tested materials and literally concrete outcomes; he built with charts and rock, not with flesh and fear and fire. He built roadways, public trams, mountain concourses, not victory. And most importantly, he dealt with inexactitude, unknown variables and uncertain outcomes with swift, total correction. Here on the line, such things were not only allowed, they were assumed. Men like Renner, it seemed, considered him the essence of the exercise. But no matter what service he was fulfilling to his nation nor what principles animated it, Hans knew the reason why. That was the human element, and encountering it was always a pleasant respite. Quietly, trying not to smile, he watched Trooper Doppelmann murmur a letter to his pen and paper.
“No, no.” Doppelmann said. “Ruth, we are fired and ready to go. Yes. Our weaponry is tremendous, our training superb and our spirits soar.”
“Think you’re
laying it on a bit thick?” Halgren asked. Doppelmann
looked up to find the rest of his squad mates – Hans’ squad – watching him,
and Halgren practically leaning over his arm. Halgren’s
roast of Doppelmann was ritual by now, a team activity among the squad to replace the
football games they’d otherwise be playing. The
squad had developed many of them over the time they’d been together, right through
Hans glanced up and spotted the spectacled Trooper sitting in an alcove behind Doppelmann – a recess in the wall that once held shelves and small clay models, but now held only their chalky, dismembered remains. Sure enough, Pohlinger was scowling. Hans could guess the cause of his disapproval. But what he could not reason was why, almost daily, Doppelmann would write the letter aloud, Halgren would wait a few lines before criticizing, and Pohlinger would lurk, grimacing in distaste, never saying a word.
“She doesn’t want to hear about how many tubes of limburger we were issued,” Doppelmann said, bowing back over the letter. “Or how all of our feet are swelling up. Ruth likes to hear about the good stuff, the exciting stuff – the crusade.”
“You’re not writing an anthem; you’re writing the daily letter home.”
“This is her brother, after all.” Doppelmann said, swatting with the letter and tossing his head back in frustration. “Ruth doesn’t want to hear he’s doing well; she needs to hear he’s doing great.”
“But Kerstens was never like that,” Halgren smirked, half-sad but playing it loose. “His version of great was really grouchy.”
Hans had never
known Karl E. Kerstens, “Milkmaid” as the squad called him when playing their
habitual game of “You Remember The Time When?...Aw Shit!” Milkmaid had been king
of the sorry, sad-sack exploit and one hell of a night fighter, and Hans was sure the
squad had been devastated when they lost him to an infected leg-wound late in the
A month later,
after the
“Well…” Doppelmann sighed. “He’s a hero now. We’re defending our country; it don’t get more heroic.”
“Doesn’t,” snarled Renner, heard only by Hans and his own immediately riveted squad.
“Yeah, okay.” Halgren conceded. He hefted up the ammunition webbing that hung like packing crates on his willowy frame. “Just remember to tell her to send more socks.”
“We’ll
then lance around both sides in company force, backed by tanks,” the Captain’s
voice rose, voice and face pinched into a keen fever pitch.
“Hit ‘em right in the rear and split their seams, send them right
back to
“More socks and more chocolate, sure.” Doppelmann muttered, bent low enough to write with his eyelashes. “Ruth, we are marching together, all Germans united in our country’s defense. Ruth, your hand is in mine as we march. We will not just stand strong; we will advance to meet our enemy.”
Hans spotted Pohlinger sifting through the shattered clay figures beside him on the alcove, brushing a thigh, a hand, half a face to the floor. A black nausea hit him suddenly, as he heard the rolling boil of the American guns press in on the town above. He bent into the typewriter and began to work fast, racing the sickness with his fingers.
Cross the kilometer of bare ground from the forest to
the villages and you have reached the defenses. Based
on American Army defensive doctrine, perimeter defenses extend four hundred meters in
three main directions for every position of five hundred square meters. A position the size of the twin villages will have
no less than sixteen perimeter defenses – “roadblocks”. Each roadblock will be located in a defiladed
position – the entrance to ravines, behind ridges, between walled farmyards or
fields. All approaches will be guarded by
mines. Anti-personnel mines will be laid in
groups of four hundred M1 models, spread forty meters by forty meters. Anti-armor mines will be laid in boxes of twenty,
in ten meter by ten meter grids. Both will be
backed by fallen trees, abatis, or foot-thick concrete revetments. Barbed wire will cover the area. In foxholes and trenches, a rifle platoon covers
the area from concealment. One machinegun,
seven automatic rifles, two bazookas and over thirty rifles must be neutralized for the
roadblock to be secured. Once the platoon is
neutralized, the Americans will immediately bring heavy artillery fire against the lost
position, according to their doctrine. Engineers
must clear the barbed wire, detonate the minefield and all obstacles in the road, and
clear the area for the attack to proceed before the enemy counterattacks.
All will be done
under direct observation from the enemy heavy machineguns, artillery spotters and mortars
in the villages. All sixteen obstacles must be
cleared before the Americans can move reinforcements into the villages and stall our
Battalion’s attack. One platoon, the 2nd
of the 7 Company (Engineers), has this mission.
We will support the first attack with valor,
enterprise, and with the confidence that our cause is just.
Hans looked up as the Lieutenant set a hand on his shoulder.
“And Sergeant Baumann here has completed a report on the terrain and obstacles Regiment can expect to overcome during the attack.” The hand clapped the back of Hans’ neck as Lieutenant Wolff stood beside him and grinned at the Captain. “We are ready as it gets, Sir.”
Captain Ott replied with a smile, but tucked it behind the crook of a finger. Nodding thoughtfully, he looked like a different man than the firebrand that had lit up the room with his incendiary rhetoric a minute before. Ott’s narrow eyes were all the sharper, and the high lines of his face looked refined, as if the years had fallen away from him in seconds, revealing him to be not just under thirty, but ancient and too wise.
“Good. You’re clear then that after the second forest line has been broken, you’re to disengage and move to the crossroads, but make no attempt – none – to fight the enemy there.” Ott jabbed at the Lieutenant with his raised finger, the twang and whip crack of his southern accent sounding with all of the fury and none of the humor of before. “Probe, and in force, but don’t hit back if they hit you. We’re sending you to see if we can tease them loose, not to get torn up trying to rip them out.”
Hans cursed to himself. He knew he’d forgotten something.
“Understood, Sir.” Wolff said soberly. A smile cracked through a moment later though, as he added, “Just like the farmhouse on 112, right, Sir?”
A scan through the report confirmed it – Hans hadn’t even mentioned the crossroads. Well, technically, he reasoned, it wasn’t even a crossroads at all, but a fork where the road branched northwest to Hollerath and southwest to Rocherath. But that was no excuse – attracted as he was to the technical, Hans was fully capable of dealing with all other aspects of life. Most other aspects, he corrected himself; he hadn’t dated since 1939. The fling with the Norwegian didn’t count; it probably wasn’t even legal. Just thinking of what he’d done with that anonymous girl made him wince deeper still as he searched for an appropriate place in the report to insert an analysis of the crossroads.
As if on cue, Wolff nudged him. “You are done, right, Baumann?”
“Just finishing up now, Sir.”
If Wolff had voiced a reply, it was lost in the laughter from Baumann’s squad, and in whispers of “check this out”, “look at this right here”. Hans didn’t miss the Lieutenant pulling his Hitler Youth knife out of its chest scabbard – “where it belongs, next to my heart”, Wolff had said to him, and Baumann, understanding and agreeing had imitated the gesture. Wolff began cutting at his fingernails, pruning them; soon he would go to work on the hair on his arms, shaving it down pink as he always did before an attack or march towards the enemy. Baumann blocked the Lieutenant out, but he couldn’t help but look at what his squad was laughing at.
The crossroads, known locally as the Lausdell
crossroads, occupy a shallow plateau at the foot of Rocherath’s ridge.
Behind him, Hans saw, Pohlinger was leaning forward out of his alcove, handing off a sculptor’s poser model to his chuckling squad mates. Made of wood contours on a wire frame, the model would have stood about a foot high if it hadn’t been bent double. As it was, the little wooden man had his head almost between his ankles, his spatulate hands spreading apart non-existent ass cheeks.
“Here you go, guys.” Pohlinger said. “I love you. Merry Christmas.”
Hans fought down a snort of laughter and turned back to his report. Jokes floated to the surface from the waves of laughter rolling out of the boys. He tried to keep writing as they bobbed about him.
“You asking me for a date, Pohl?”
Due to the importance of…
“Oh this poor bastard – he’s sorry he ever met you.”
…this major road network, it can be expected to be
held…
“This
supposed to be
…by at least company, if not reinforced company,
strength…
“Fuck man, I – Fuck, I forgot what I was going to say; laughing so hard, shit…”
…with the standard three perimeter defenses around
it.
When Renner’s squad finally turned around and busted into laughter, Baumann couldn’t hold back any more. He glanced back at his squad again, catching a glimpse on the way of Graubens popping another box of raisins and shoveling them into his laughing mouth. Pohlinger was trying to swat Doppelmann’s hands away from taking the model’s mitts off of its bottom.
“Quit it, man, quit it. I found him that way.”
“Fuck,” laughed Graubens. “That’s some funny shit.”
“Language.” Renner growled, looking up from shaving his arms and flicking fresh blood off the razor.
“He’s our mascot.” Pohlinger explained.
“Your unit still in this fight?” The Captain yelled to Wolff, his conversation apparently interrupted. Hans shrugged back into his report, typing hastily.
Given that the Lausdell crossroads are fronted by a low
dell and surrounded by hedges, all efforts to mass forces in concealment around the
crossroads should be made.
“Everything’s alright, Sir.”
“So it seems.”
Hans glanced behind him to confirm. The squad sat, parade straight and gleaming in their dirty, dark-dotted camouflage. He showed them a smile, one that widened as it got no reply, not even a twinkle, from the stiff soldiers under his charge.
“You get that report out to Regiment right away, Wolff.”
Therefore the first objective of the engineer platoon is the Lausdell crossroads.
“Yes,
Sir.” The Lieutenant held his hand out. With a yank on the report, Hans filled it with the
finished product. As Wolff looked it over,
Hans breathed a sigh of relief – it always felt good to finish a project, and somehow
felt even better when it came in just under the wire.
If this was frontline living, as opposed to the life of gefilte fish buffets
and long, apricot-colored afternoons like in
Jann was leaning in again; he nodded towards Hans’ squad. “You’ve got a good group there.” Hans nodded, but spared a good natured smile – he knew what was coming. “Be sure you take care of them like brothers.”
“Right.” It almost surprised Hans when the usual hint of humor fell flat, and the instruction seemed condescending, even insulting. It shocked him in fact, as he was used to Jann pretending to play the seasoned vet on account of his having been under fire with an anti-air artillery unit before transfer to the 12th SS; he was used to the sarcastic sagely advice, used to it soothing him and making him smile. Instead he now felt sickened, like Jann had gut punched him on a lark. “Right,” he choked out, and turned away.
“I’m serious.”
Hans wanted to hear no more of it, and decided to go on the offensive - to change the subject. He turned around, setting an arm on the back of his chair, and gestured towards Jann’s squad. “And what about yours, Sarge? What are you going to do with them?”
Some of the squad looked over with wide, hapless faces. They seemed exactly like the lost Romanian teenagers, abandoned by conscription to violence and foreign language, that they were. Jann turned away before succumbing to a frown and slumped shoulders.
“I don’t know. Lead them as usual, with mime and hand puppets.”
He was saved from having to answer further as a soldier, young face sapped to white wax, shouldered in the door and stumbled towards the Captain. The whole room hung on the end of his stiff-armed Party salute, and on the red rims of his tear-stained eyes. He sniffled and yelled, “Hail victory, Captain!”
Even Ott seemed taken aback by the show of fervor. No doubt, Hans thought, because it came from such a feeble, shaken boy – the soldier looked like he was melting, running off the thin frame of his skeleton, pooling with the sweat and new snow about his boots. He wiped his dripping face as Ott replied with a salute of his own.
“Hail Hitler. What do you have for me, son?”
As the Captain read the dispatch the soldier handed him, the Lieutenant handed the report back to Hans. Hans noticed how light the paper felt, being of an inferior quality, almost as thin as breath. And he noticed, to an abrupt dismay, the silence of the room bulging and splintering with the artillery bursts outside.
“Get this out to Regiment at once.” Wolff said.
“Sir?” It made no sense to Hans, used to conducting business through a flexible, ubiquitous network of meetings and analysis – Regiment already, before the Captain, or even Company command had seen it?
“Use a runner.”
It
made even less sense. “Right now, sir?” The
American artillery was coming down as a solid sound. Hans
had heard trees fall before; heard a dead tree burst its trunk while on an
Wolff whirled on him, tapping his knife’s tip against his fingernails. Its point was in his stare, his teeth, his tone. “Let me enlighten you as to something, Hans, as this is your first time on the line against the Amis. It doesn’t stop.”
“Good.” The Captain yelled, handing off the dispatch back to the soldier. “Everyone up!” he called, and the room stood while the dispatch runner collapsed against a wall and slid down it as if boneless, eyes and mouth wide and gasping.
“The shelling doesn’t stop.” Wolff went on, “and when it does stop, it’s just long enough to decide who goes out to deliver that message, or check that break in the phone wire, or see what’s taking dinner so damn long. And just as soon as they’re outside, it starts up again.”
“We gather here, together, and resolute.” The Captain continued. “We are tough, men, damn tough, because we know it’s got to be this way – everyone, together, hard – if our country’s going to survive.”
“So don’t bother waiting.” And as the Lieutenant’s voice dropped under the Captain’s speech, Hans had already decided. Burning from this upbraiding, afraid of what it meant, he had already decided to be done with it as quick as he could. He wouldn’t deliberate over who was fastest or luckiest or less well liked – he would just pick someone, the first someone he thought of. “Choose someone,” Wolff hissed, “and get him going now.” And that would be that.
Hans held out the report behind him. “Pohlinger. Get this report to Regiment as fast as you can.” Not until he turned and saw Pohlinger snatch the paper from his hand with a quick nod did he realize who he sent. The thought had been too quick for Hans to draft into anything real, just a brief straight line. But now here were cue ball cheeks, pocked and lined by wear into deli meat, narrowing to a chin with a curious red line above its prominent jut. Here was thin brown hair and thick, dust-gray glasses, and a mouth that was always a little downturned, even when smiling. And all this, and the way his ears went back when Hans or any authority figure spoke to him, and the hidden grinding of his teeth, was a schematic he instantly recognized as Pohlinger. It was Pohlinger, and all the things that inhabited him.
The trooper folded the report with one hand, made a fist and tapped the top of his helmet twice with the other. “Will do, Sergeant. See you, guys.”
He hustled out the door, without the Captain breaking the stride of his speech.
“And this country, our country, must survive. We all know it – we don’t have a choice but to fight for our way of life, our freedom. We didn’t want it this way, didn’t start this war, but we’ll see it finished on our terms or through peaceful negotiation. We won’t be dominated by the hypocrites and the bullies and we won’t be made slaves in our own homes!”
Ott swept one arm to encompass the room. For an instant, he reminded Hans of one of the numerous poser models, his face lit round and chalky by the light of the makeshift fires burning in the kilns. “We have to go on the attack to defend our liberty, our basic values, but this isn’t anything new to us. When the Commies came after us, we said, ‘No! Our way for our people!’, and we drove them out. When the Polish tried to extort us and hold us hostage, we said, ‘No! Our way for our people!’, and we took the fight to them. Now the British and the Americans have come for us. And now they’re going to get the same answer –”
Ott stomped the floor and pumped his fist like a boxer. “No! Our way for our people! We aren’t going to be your slaves, no matter how hard you fight, and how dirty the tricks you pull! We’re stopping you here, once and for all! And just in case you think you can try and crush the spirit of any German, we’re doing it together!
“We’re proving this ends now!”
Hans
heard most of the room cheer with him. He
snapped his arm high, trying to tap heaven on the shoulder with it; held it up there. Under it he felt the supportive, beaming stare of
his sister, felt the after-winter air of his family’s
The feeling was still buzzing, and echoed in reply to when Jann patted him on the shoulder.
“You got an extra grenade?”
Hans handed him one.
“I done got a box.” Halgren said, setting a crate on the bench he’d been sitting on, and pulling the plastic wrapped off the grenades. Renner muttered something under his breath, something that steamed – philistines? – as he checked his zippo lighter.
“Hand them around, then.” Jann instructed the youth. “And don’t Jew my squad either, hmm?” Halgren sighed and began to pass around the grenades to the two squads. It took Hans only a moment to glance at himself and double-check he was ready. In truth, it would be his seventh check that morning; he had made sure he would be ready for combat at a moment’s notice since he woke with an attack order in the air. With nothing to do but wonder why all the veterans – his own squad included – seemed to be the ones having to rush at the last moment to ready themselves, he stood and patted heat into his hands and tried not to look dull.
“Sergeant Baumann!” Ott yelled. “Come with me outside, will you?”
Hans looked around, bewildered, but the Captain stared at him long enough that any doubt he was the one called on faded. Muttering something perfunctory to his squad about seeing them on the line, he hustled after Ott.
He caught up with the Captain in the gathering snow outside. Ott and his attendants stomped their feet and pressed against the ruined wall of the building that held the sculptor’s studio. The snow wasn’t thick yet; just an occasional white hole in the thick, black air, but its cold infested everything. Hans felt as if he’d been bitten, as if the night were gnawing at him, trying to suck his skin off. He pressed the backs of his hands to his face to hold in the warmth and looked up to where Ott was breathing flame-pale plumes.
“Nice weather, hunh?” One of the Battalion staff said.
“I wanted to talk to you about the report, Sergeant.” Ott said, clapping his hands together.
“Yes, Sir.” Hans answered, looking around on the street for any other sign of life – any sign of Pohlinger and the report. “I wanted to show it to you, as it contains a summary of the defenses Battalion will need to overcome…”
“I’m sure it’s excellent work, Baumann. Just excellent.”
“Yes, Sir,” Hans chimed. Ott’s enthusiasm, his support, bolstered Hans’ confidence in his case – that the report should be seen, and soon; at least before the Battalion spent the entire day attacking over the ground it analyzed. But something about Ott’s grin, his paternal cheer, sewed doubt in the same confidence it inspired. “That’s why I think—”
“Do a similar report on the Lausdell crossroads – a more extensive site report, really going into the engineering specs of the fortifications and the possible use of the site as a defensive position. If you get there. Good?”
Ott began to walk off without waiting, turning from out of the shell of the studio building onto the main street. Hans rushed to catch up with him, both parties stomping through mud that held not like glue, but like rubber cement. Frustrated as Hans was, he wasn’t going to let it drop without a fight. Fighting for what was right, after all, was what they were here for.
He caught up with them as the Captain suddenly halted in his tracks.
“Fuck.” Ott mumbled.
“Sir, I have to say these report are most useful when someone reads them, so if you read—” Hans halted beside Ott, staring along with the Battalion staff at what lay on the ground.
He didn’t feel the words drop away first. It was sense that dropped away first – feeling, sound, balance – all sense but smell. All senses, and then, close after them, memory. Being fled him. He was left only a standing sack of water, staring at something spread thick and wet through the snow, standing on bones he could not feel as his own. Hans stopped talking after he forgot it was his jaw moving, his sounds being made.
He stared at the pieces on the ground, smeared ten feet with the consistency of jam. But it was thicker than jam, having the opaque thickness of snot, and though it curdled all over its wide spread, where it curdled most it was burned. It was a fan of smoking liquid, sticky brown and clotted red; it was huge. It tapered, ended, in two thin legs dressed in indigo and earthtone camo.
And how strange, Hans thought as he came back to thinking, that this too was a schematic he instantly recognized as Pohlinger. A pair of legs, a spume of flesh, and it was Pohlinger.
“Someone will read it.” Ott said dismissively. He smacked Hans on the shoulder supportively while turning to his aide. While he spoke, he pushed off Hans and began walking again, walking straight for the forest.
“And
get someone to clean that up,” Ott instructed his aide. “Too damn depressing to
see before going into a full-blooded attack like this.”
All contents copyright © Matthew Funk 2007, all rights reserved.