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

Nehmann nodded, said he understood, peeled off a glove to scribble a note or two, and then – as if the thought had just occurred to him – enquired whether anyone had come across a young Russian with perfect German, name of Kirile. The staff sergeant, who was a difficult man to fool, stared at Nehmann.

‘You’ve come here to ask me a question like that?’ He was incredulous. ‘You’re risking your life for a fucking deserter?’

The answer was yes, as Grimberger was the first to point out once they were back in the safety of the bus depot, and after that there were no more expeditions to the front line. But it didn’t matter because Nehmann’s mood had darkened. There were no more attempts to make the turd that was Stalingrad smell sweet, no more bids to confect amusing stories, fictitious or otherwise, about the small print of this sorry enterprise. On the contrary, Nehmann began to brood.

One evening, in a snow-dusted dugout near the airfield as homely as the conditions would permit, he had a long conversation with an artillery man from Bielefeld. Smoke from a homemade stove curled through the frost-stiffened tarpaulin. The walls were lined with hessian and there was a wonderful smell of horse rissoles and cakes baked on mess-tin lids.

A couple of weeks ago, said the artilleryman, his battery had been deployed to target a Soviet stockpile of artillery shells. The shells were shipped across the river at night. Women carried them eight at a time, in groundsheets, for six kilometres and then went back for more, night after night, six kilometres, twelve kilometres, eighteen kilometres. This was what the intelligence told us, the artilleryman said, and it turned out they were right. We knew where the target was. We had the coordinates. We were told to wait for days and days until the women had built a decent pile and then came the order to fire.

‘So, what happened?’

‘The biggest bang you ever saw. A huge explosion. Our Leutnant thought he was up for a medal. Maybe even a Ritterkreuz.Me? I could have wept for those women, for all that effort, all that pain, all that fear.The killing in this city never takes time off. Have you noticed that?’

The killing in this city never takes time off.

Nehmann made a note of the phrase. It was as close to the truth as anything he’d heard. Death was a physical presence: conscientious, reliable, scrupulous, even-handed. It came for you without warning, and it ignored any objection you might have. People said that bullets never hit brave men but Nehmann had seen enough now to know that this was bollocks. Death was everywhere, first cousin to the weather, and Stalingrad had become the Schicksalsstadt, the City of Fate.

A couple of days later, with still no word on Kirile, Nehmann picked up the November edition of Das Reich,the magazine Goebbels used to explore his changing thoughts about the war. The key to his thinking was always the editorial and that afternoon, with time to kill, Nehmann settled down to read it. Goebbels, he quickly realised, was keen to make a distinction between Stimmung,meaning ‘mood’, and Haltung,meaning ‘bearing’. The first, he said, was frivolous, a plaything, an indulgence, of no consequence, while Haltung was something weightier and altogether more seemly. With the right Haltung,the nation could do anything, share any burden, survive any trial. Haltung might one day be the only path to victory, which meant that the days when Stimmung mattered were well and truly over.

Nehmann sat back, remembering the afternoon when Hitler returned to Berlin after his triumph in France. The flowers along the Wilhelmstrasse. The crowds desperate for a glimpse of their Führer. The swelling roar of acclamation as the cavalcade approached from the Anhalter station. And Hedvika’s arse moving sweetly beneath him. Stimmung,he thought. Another world.

*

That night he declined Grimberger’s offer of a cigar and a glass or two of vodka and worked hard on a piece about their visit to the front line. For once, he let the facts speak for themselves, no embellishments, no easy punchlines, not a single opportunity for the reader to arrive at anything but the obvious conclusion: that battle was an experience beyond most people’s imagination and that this one was probably lost.

The draft complete, he wound a fresh sheet of paper into the Abwehr typewriter and then showed the results to Schultz. He took his time to read it. Lately, he’d had to find a pair of glasses from somewhere, a tiny detail that told Nehmann a great deal about this war. Not even a stayer like Schultz could survive undamaged.

‘It’s the best thing you’ve done here.’ Schultz looked up. ‘Goebbels will wipe his arse with it.’

‘Maybe not.’ Nehmann nodded at the Luftpost pouch readied on the desk. ‘I’ll try and get it out tomorrow.’

It went next day. The following week, mid-December, the river froze over completely and a machine-gunner returning from the front line reported that the Soviets were broadcasting announcements day and night for the benefit of the listening Germans. One of you will die every seven seconds on the Eastern Front, a voice would say. We’ll be pleased to maintain this service as long as you’re here. Propaganda like this, accompanied by a loudly ticking clock, naturally prompted an instant response – volleys of mortar shells to silence the loudspeakers – but supplies of the shells, said the machine-gunner, were fast running out. Shit music, too, unless you liked the tango.

Nehmann was impressed by the story but it seemed to have made little impact on the machine-gunner. In the relative warmth of the bus depot, he took his helmet off. He’d wrapped a Russian foot bandage around the bareness of his shaven scalp and when Nehmann offered his compliments on the choice of insulation, the machine-gunner showed him his gloves. They were crudely made, an odd piebald colour, but apparently effective.

‘We had a dog called Fritz.’ The machine-gunner grinned. ‘I got to skin it.’

That