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

‘Stir,’ he said.

Nehmann and Schultz stood beside the stove while Nehmann stirred the stew, grateful for the warmth. Within minutes, the thick, brown concoction began to bubble. Schultz had been right. Kalb smelled delicious.

The orderly returned. He wanted Nehmann to go from patient to patient, feeding each just a little of the stew. A couple of spoonfuls would be enough to keep most of them alive for an extra day or two. Any more, and their stomachs would never cope.

‘Komm,’ he said again. ‘We feed only those who might survive.’

Nehmann didn’t move. He was looking at Schultz.

‘You want some, Willi?’ he asked. ‘Before we go?’

Schultz took his time in answering. Finally, he shook his head. The orderly was staring at him, amazed.

‘No?’ he said. ‘Meat? You don’t want any? You’re really saying no?’

‘No.’ Schultz patted the flatness of his belly. ‘Enough.’

Nehmann left Schultz warming his hands beside the stove. As they entered the main ward, the orderly turned to Nehmann who was carrying the pot, wrapped once again in the blanket.

‘Your friend is a true Christian,’ he said. ‘How many of those does this army have left?’

‘A man of faith.’ Nehmann was looking at the pot. ‘And a privilege to be his Kamerad.’

They moved from bed to bed, Nehmann spooning the stew into the mess tin while the orderly coaxed each broken body into some semblance of a sitting position. Most of the men could barely chew, let alone swallow, and every one of these small acts of mercy left a great deal of Kalb on the fronts of greatcoats or tangled in a week’s growth of beard. Yet these men, tormented by the unctuous smell still wafting up from the pot, still did their best to get the stew inside them. Some darkly primitive survival urge, Nehmann thought, had prompted a belief in survival, or maybe even salvation, and here it was.

With barely a spoonful of Kalb left, Nehmann found himself perched beside a man who looked older than the rest. He had, he said, been the sole survivor of a Panzer crew hit by a Katyusha rocket. He’d been in the hospital for nearly a week while both his legs had been amputated. The pain, he admitted, was grim but there was no infection in either wound, itself a small miracle, and he’d been promised priority on the evacuation list for the next flight out.

He swallowed the last spoonful of stew and insisted on wiping out the pot with his finger afterwards. Crudely taped to the wall above his bed was a magazine cover that Nehmann recognised. The Frauen-Warte. He pointed the photo out to the amputee: half a dozen of the Reich’s finest, bestriding the top of Mount Elbrus.

‘Gut, ja? Wunderbar.’ The amputee was still sucking his finger. ‘I look at it at nights when I’m lonely. You know where I come from? Berchtesgaden. I used to do that as a kid. Show me a mountain and I’d climb it.’

Show me a mountain and I’d climb it. Nehmann nodded and reached for the man’s hand. He came from the mountains himself, he said, and he knew exactly what they meant. He wished him luck on the flight out and gave his hand a squeeze.

The pot empty, Nehmann got to his feet to follow the orderly through the tangle of bodies. The smell in the ward was, if anything, worse and Nehmann was still wondering what it must take to work in conditions like this when he stepped back into the warmth of the kitchen. It took him a moment to realise that Schultz was no longer alone. Three other figures, all Chain Dogs, had joined him. One of them was the Leutnant,who was in the process of handcuffing Schultz. The moment he saw Nehmann he told him he was under arrest.

‘For what?’

The Leutnant didn’t answer. He was staring at the empty pot.

‘What was in there?’

‘Stew.’ Nehmann shrugged. ‘For the men here.’

‘What sort of stew?’

‘Stewy stew. Ragout. Weather like this? Very sustaining.’

There was a moment’s silence. The Leutnant sniffed the pot, studied the smear of liquid at the bottom.

‘Delicious.’ It was the orderly. ‘Don’t you agree?’

Nehmann and Schultz were driven back to the half-demolished building that had served as a joint SS/Feldgendarmerie headquarters. It turned out to have been a school. The two prisoners were separated the moment they arrived, and Nehmann found himself in a biggish room flooded with afternoon sunshine. Rows of tiny desks and midget chairs occupied most of the floor space and the remains of a lesson on elementary addition was still chalked on the blackboard. There was a scatter of picture books, too, and Nehmann made himself as comfortable as he could on the floor, handcuffed to a radiator that didn’t work, listening to the roar of battle barely kilometres away. There was no glass in the windows at all. It was cold but bearable and Nehmann sat with his back to the wall, his knees drawn up, dreading the moment when the sun would dip below the window and the temperature would plunge.

The Leutnant arrived nearly an hour later. He eyed Nehmann warily, the way you might view an animal you didn’t entirely trust, and he finally settled on a nearby desk. Nehmann had only ever been in the company of this man when Kalb had been present. He’d never talked to him, never had a chance to form any kind of opinion. He didn’t even know his name.

‘Mikhail Magalashvili.’ Nehmann extended his free hand.

‘You’re Georgian?’ The Leutnant seemed surprised.

‘Yes. From Svengati. Ever been there?’ Nehmann gestured up at the window. ‘This kind of weather but with mountains.’

‘You have papers? ID?’

Nehmann nodded.

‘Put them on the floor. Let me see them.’

All Nehmann had was his Promi pass. He put it on the floor. The Leutnant got off the desk and picked it up, never taking his eyes off Nehmann. He inspected the pass at arm’s length.

‘Werner Nehmann?’

‘That’s me, as well.’

‘You work for Goebbels?’

‘I do.’

‘As a Georgian?’

‘As a journalist.’

The news seemed to give the