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

Schultz, unprompted, had produced the spade. Nehmann took it. The blizzard seemed to have eased a little, but he could still hear the wind keening over the rough pelt of the steppe. His mouth, his nostrils, his ears, were full of snow. Kalb’s body had become a smear on the face of the earth. Only his face remained intact, frozen in surprise, or perhaps anger. Nehmann stood beside him, staring down, tallying the faces in the back of the SS truck, remembering Kirile sprawled in the vestry. Then he raised the spade high before driving it into Kalb’s face, splitting it cleanly in two. He’d never felt better in his life.

34

STALINGRAD, 17 JANUARY 1943

Nehmann cooked the remains of Kalb that night, tossing the guts to the two cats. He used the remains of the wood in the bus depot, fired up the Abwehr stove, borrowed Schultz’s biggest pot, and scraped a thin layer of fat from Kalb’s thigh to grease the bottom of the pan. He sliced up the heart and liver and put them carefully to one side. The meat from Kalb’s legs would take longer to cook and, after flash-frying chunk after chunk, he added fresh snow from a drift at the back of the building. Once the snow had melted, he added generous spoonfuls of salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne, plus a selection of herbs from the supply Magda Goebbels had given him at Christmas. By the time Schultz returned to the bus depot with an armful of more wood, stamping the snow from his boots, the pot was bubbling nicely.

Schultz peeled off his greatcoat and gave it a shake.

‘He smells a lot better dead than alive,’ he grunted.

*

Nehmann let Kalb simmer all night. He threw together a makeshift bed on the floor beside the stove and for the first time in weeks he slept like a baby. Next morning, he awoke to find Schultz inspecting the contents of the pot. The roar of battle felt very close.

‘More water,’ Schultz said. ‘And more pepper.’

‘You’ve tasted it?’

‘Of course.’

Mid-morning, the meat tender, Nehmann put a lid on the pot, wrapped it in a blanket, and then carried it carefully out into the snow. Schultz had told him more than enough about the field hospital at Gumrak. The pot was nearly full. There was enough, certainly, to feed at least a dozen men. It would be Nehmann’s pleasure to put SS Standartenführer Kalb to the service of the Greater Reich.

The storm had blown itself out overnight and a weak sun threw long shadows across the virgin snow. For whatever reason, both armies appeared to be catching their breath and a silence had settled on the emptiness of the city. Under any other circumstances, thought Nehmann, it might almost have been beautiful.

At Schultz’s suggestion, they took a longer route to the field hospital, avoiding the Feldgendarmerie HQ. Nehmann was disappointed not to be able to see Kalb’s body for one last time but the best bits of him, the useful bits, the tastiest bits, were in the pot between his feet. Wild dogs, he guessed, would be nosing at the rest of Kalb by now, tearing off frozen chunks from his face, eating his brain, lapping at the torn remains in his body cavity, starting on the bones, and in any case it was best to avoid the Chain Dogs. Kalb might be unrecognisable by now but his Russian greatcoat most definitely wasn’t.

The field hospital announced itself with piles of bodies stacked untidily beside the rutted tracks in the snow that served as an approach road. Closer, some of the bodies, on stretchers and planks of wood this time, appeared to be alive. A flicker of movement in a man’s eyes at the sound of the Kübelwagen, a head turning as it bumped slowly past, a hand lifting in a plea for it to stop.

The hospital itself was smaller than Nehmann had imagined. Smoke curled from a brick chimney. He smiled, glancing down the saucepan. They could warm Kalb up. Everything would be fine.

A male orderly met them at the hanging blanket, scabbed with something brown, that did duty as a door. Under what remained of his uniform, he was skeletal. He was wearing gloves and a torn field jacket. The cuffs of the jacket glistened with fresh blood and there was more blood clotting on his trousers. His eyes were bright in the gauntness of his face.

‘You’re hurt?’

‘We’ve brought food.’ Nehmann nodded down at the pot. ‘We can warm this up?’

‘What is it?’

‘Stew. Casserole. Call it Ragout Stalingrad.’

‘It’s got meat in it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Komm.’

He led the way inside. Despite the fierce cold, the stench was overpowering, a thick, sour sweetness that reminded Nehmann at once of Kalb. Every horizontal space – beds, mattresses, wooden pallets, the floor itself – was littered with bodies, most of them bandaged. Men lying on their backs, their sightless eyes open, their chests barely rising and falling. Men lying sideways in the foetal position, their knees drawn up, their hands buried between their thighs. One of them had a hideous facial injury where a bayonet must have plunged into his cheek. A big flap of flesh was hanging down, revealing tobacco-stained teeth and the whiteness of bone beneath, and the bloodstained length of bandage barely hid half the wound.

‘We’ve nearly run out.’ The orderly was nodding at the bandage. ‘We’re down to half a metre a man. By lunchtime, we’ll have nothing.’

He’d taken the pot from Nehmann. He lifted the lid, peered inside, dipped a finger, licked it.

‘Gut,’ he muttered, slipping off a glove and scooping up a mouthful with his bare hand. Then he put the lid back on and led the way down a corridor to a kitchen. A small pile of wood from smashed-up delivery pallets lay beside the stove. The cast-iron top of the stove glowed red-hot. The orderly put the pot on the stove and disappeared. Seconds later he was back with a battered metal spoon. He gave it to