Last Flight to Stalingrad by Graham Hurley (novels to read .txt) 📕

You had a family once. I met them out at Wannsee. You remember?’

‘Of course.’ Messner nodded. He was watching a pair of Heinkels wheeling towards them at the end of the landing run. The roar of the engines made conversation impossible for a minute or two, then the aircraft came to a halt and a sudden silence descended. ‘She wanted me to call her Noo-Noo,’ he said softly. ‘Can you believe that?’

‘Lottie?’

‘Beata. My once-upon-a-time wife.’

‘You make it sound like a fairy tale.’

‘Never. It was never that. We were sensible people, Nehmann, my wife and I. Sensible in our professions. Sensible in our choice of friends, in what we ate, in how much we let ourselves go. Sensible in every way you might like to consider.’

‘Sensible in bed?’

The question brought a frown to Messner’s face. He plucked at a tiny blade of grass, sucked it briefly, spat it out.

‘I take it you know about Olga,’ he said at length.

‘I heard one or two things.’

‘How?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Did the Generaloberst tell you? Be honest, Nehmann. It doesn’t matter. The man is a grown-up. He knows what matters and what doesn’t.’

‘Did Olga matter?’

‘For a while, yes.’

‘And Beata?’

‘No. Not any more. I wrote letters, lots of letters, schoolboy letters. These matters are always more complicated than you think.’

‘These letters were to Olga?’

‘Of course. And in the end, they found their way to my wife. She’s a scientist, Nehmann. She lives in the world of cause and effect. She believes in evidence, in putting things to the test, and in the name of good sense she decided that the marriage was over. Very wise.’

‘And you?’

‘I understand her decision.’

‘Do you regret it?’

‘You mean the decision?’

‘I mean Olga Helm.’

‘Not in the slightest. A man does what a man does. Everything in life carries a lesson. Perhaps I married the wrong woman.’

‘And you and Olga?’

‘Gone. Over. Finished.’

Nehmann nodded. He was up on one elbow now, watching the bomber crews sharing a joke as they walked away from the Heinkels. This brief insight into Messner’s private life, he thought, was beyond bleak.

‘So what matters now?’ He gestured round the airfield. ‘Is all this shit enough?’

‘More than enough. The Generaloberst gives me certain freedoms. On one level I’m flattered. On another I’m simply grateful. Take a good look at my face, Nehmann. And then ask yourself what the rest of me must be like.’

‘You’re carrying other injuries?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Most of them on the inside. Accidents like mine either kill you or nearly kill you. And you may have noticed that I didn’t die, not properly, not for good.’ He got to his feet, his eyes never leaving Nehmann’s face. ‘Any more questions, Nehmann? Or are you happy, now?’

Nehmann didn’t get up. He’d pushed his luck, but he didn’t care. Something had been troubling him for days.

‘Helmut,’ he said. ‘The cameraman.’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s gone. The rest of his team are still here but not him. Was he ill? Have you flown him out?’

‘Ill? No. And, yes, we made arrangements for him to leave.’

‘He’ll be coming back?’

‘I doubt it.’ He hesitated a moment, a busy man checking his watch, then he was looking down at Nehmann again. ‘War can be harsh, my friend. It might be wise to keep that in mind.’

*

In the second week of September, the first frost. Nehmann emerged from his tent, feeling the chill and the crispness of the grass beneath his feet. He’d talked to enough veterans by now, men who’d struggled through the previous winter, to know exactly what lay in wait. The fast-melting frost was nature’s down payment on the months to come. The wind from the east was blowing the remains of the summer’s dust and chaff across the airfield. It would get far, far, colder.

And it did. On 17 September, the temperature suddenly plunged. Nehmann awoke at dawn. He was still alone in the tent. He’d already helped himself to the blanket folded on the next bed but now, shivering, he struggled out to lay hands on a third. Back in bed, he drew his knees up to his chest, his hands between his thighs, desperate to conserve every particle of warmth. He’d tried to sleep like this as a kid in Svengati, with the cold sluicing off the mountains, but it had been January then, the very depths of winter, while here on the steppe it was still autumn.

Last night he’d been summoned to the Generaloberst’s command tent. Richthofen himself wasn’t there but Messner, barely raising his head from the usual pile of paperwork, had told him that there might be a possibility of Nehmann making it into the city. Supply flights to the forward airfield at Pitomnik were scheduled throughout the day and Messner himself would be piloting one of them. Weather permitting, Nehmann was welcome to come along.

Nehmann had asked him what he’d be carrying.

‘Food, fuel, letters from home, plus the man from the Promi,’ Messner muttered. ‘What else could a soldier possibly want?’

Back in his tent, the temperature already below zero, Nehmann had wondered what might be lying in wait for him among the ruins of the city. He talked to returning bomber crews every day. They were in the air for as long as six hours, sortie after sortie, clambering down from their aircraft for a snatched meal and a brief check of the maps and air recce photos waiting in the operations tent. Bombing specific targets, they told him, was like bombing in the dark. There was smoke everywhere from burning oil tanks, thick, viscous. The stuff penetrated the aircraft itself, catching in the back of the throat, insidious, evil, and getting even a glimpse of anything on the ground was impossible. The only thing worse than flying through shit like that, said one pilot, would be trying to survive underneath it.

Messner appeared shortly after eight. He stood in the entrance to the tent, stamping warmth back into his feet. He had an armful of clothing which he tossed at Nehmann.

‘Put this stuff on.’ His breath clouded