To make matters worse, a real stinker had been lying in his in-tray for the past few days. In the confusion at the time of the Russian breakthrough, some secret documents had gone missing from the supply train of the Tank Destroyer Division, and Captain Eichert, who had an insuperable aversion to all forms of paperwork, had asked Breuer to draft the necessary reports on the matter. In the meantime, the Tank Destroyer Division had long since ceased to exist. Despite this, he had just received the fourth itemized request from Corps HQ asking him to explain:
a) Why the papers were being stored in the supply train in the first place.
b) Whether, and if so by whom, the driver of the lorry in question had been informed about the confidentiality provisions concerning his load.
c) How it came to be that, among the secret orders, there were still certain papers dating from the time of the French campaign, notwithstanding the fact that, in compliance with Army Ordinance XY HV sheet number so-and-so, these should have been destroyed by the summer of 1942.
d) Why the driver, assuming that he had, as noted under query b), been apprised of the situation, had not made every effort to defend the truck containing the secret documents or, if this had not proved possible, why he had not destroyed it.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ Breuer swore as he read the message. ‘Seems like the old nag of Prussian bureaucracy keeps on galloping even when all its riders have already kicked the bucket. Do you know what I feel like writing back to them, Wiese? I’ll tell them to—’
‘Just say: “The driver is dead. There are strong indications that he was driven to suicide by incessant questioning on the part of the army!”’ suggested Wiese.
Wiese is just in the process of buckling up his belt. His company commander has ordered him to report to him on official business. Just as he’s about to set off, Geibel, who has been washing his hands in the snow outside, sticks his head into the bunker.
‘Quick, Lieutenant Breuer!’ he calls excitedly. ‘Come quickly! Something’s going on out here!’
The two officers rush out into the glaring light of day. It’s one of those clear, frosty days on which the super-chilled air shimmers with tiny ice crystals when it is caught in the rays of the sun. ‘There, there!’ hollers Geibel, pointing ahead. ‘Now he really has got him… bugger it!’ A few hundred metres away, where the plain begins to rise to the north, a large transport aircraft, a Ju 52, is skimming close to the ground, trailing a plume of blackish-brown smoke behind it. It staggers like a bird with an injured wing, and the frantic drone of its engines cuts out intermittently. There is a sudden flash of silver-white above. A nimble Russian fighter dives one more time like a hawk on the stricken plane, delivering the coup de grâce with a short burst of machine-gun fire. The Junkers pancakes onto the uneven ground, smashing its undercarriage with a loud crunch, and the large grey-green fuselage buckets across the snow for a short distance before finally coming to rest heeled over in a dip. The fighter banks steeply over the crash site to make sure of its ‘kill’ and then disappears with a flash of white into the blue yonder.
From all sides, soldiers come stumbling as fast as they can through the deep, ice-crusted snow towards the blazing aircraft, shouting and waving their arms. A crash like this is a red-letter day, a welcome change from the bleak monotony of their daily lives; and besides, who can say what treasures the ‘Ju’ might be carrying?
‘Come on, lads! Maybe it’s a cargo of Scho-Ka-Kola!’ ‘Or salami!’ ‘Hope it’s not fuel or ammo!’
Lieutenant Wiese dashes round the burning plane. It’s in a bad way. One of its engines has embedded itself deep in the wing and is on fire. Thick smoke is also billowing from the middle of the fuselage. Soldiers are crowding around the cockpit, pressing their faces to the windows. Oblivious to the flames, two men have clambered up on to the side of the plane.
‘Get down from there!’ Breuer shouts at them. ‘Do you want to get burned alive, or what?’
‘But the crew’s still trapped inside, Lieutenant!’
Lieutenant Wiese rushes up to lend a helping hand. The pilot and co-pilot are trapped in the front part of the aircraft. It appears the access door into the cockpit from the cabin has got jammed after the hard landing. The heat of the fire has roused the two men, who must initially have been stunned by the impact of the crash. They are screaming and hammering wildly at the plane’s corrugated skin. Every now and then, their heads appear at the smoke-blackened windows. One of them seems to be wounded; his face is smeared with blood. The seamless aluminium sides of the plane and the smooth windows offer nowhere for the rescuers to gain purchase.
‘A hatchet! Someone fetch a hatchet!’ shouts Wiese. A couple of men head off towards the bunkers. The side loading-door of the aircraft is swinging loose on its hinges. Cubes of dried, compressed pea flour have poured from the opening, forming a huge pile. The flames are already licking around them. The troops have pounced on the heap, eagerly filling their pockets, forage caps and balaclavas with the goods. After running around the plane to try to gain access, Breuer and Geibel drag a body out from the tail section. It is the rear gunner. He isn’t moving but is still just about breathing. His face and hands are blistered from the intense heat. He is wrapped in a coat and carried away. All attempts to break into the cockpit prove fruitless. By this time, the metal skin of the aircraft is too hot to touch. Fierce flames now erupt from the engines and the cockpit, spraying burning fuel around, and the aluminium ignites, emitting a blinding bluish-white light that hisses and splutters. The heat is becoming unbearable and the smoke ever more acrid. All at once, there is a loud bang. Someone shouts:
‘Watch out! Get back! Take cover! The machine-gun belts are going up!’
There follows an erratic patter of small detonations. Burst cartridges buzz through the air with a metallic hum. The rescuers eventually manage to smash through the toughened glass of the cockpit windows, but the opening is too narrow to pull the pilots through. The sudden influx of air prevents them from suffocating, but that only makes their predicament all the more awful. The piercing screams of the men don’t sound human any more. Their piteous shrieks drown out the spitting, crackling sound of the voracious blaze.
‘Hee-ee-ee-lp!! … Shoot me! Shoo-oot me! … Eeeaurghh… aaaiiieeee… hee-ee-ee-lp… Mo–oother… Mo– aaaaaiih…’
Every so often, when the smoke clears, they catch glimpses through the window openings of the men’s faces contorted in their death agonies and framed with tongues of leaping flame.
‘Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty,’ gasps Breuer. ‘We’ve got to put them out of their misery!… Doesn’t anyone have a gun? This is ghastly!’
Lieutenant Wiese stands there staring at the inferno in helpless horror. A thought is hammering away in his brain with painful insistence: Dear God, we have to do something! We can’t just look on helplessly and impotently while two people are burned alive in front of us! We just can’t! His head threatens to explode.
He shields his eyes with his hand, as if hoping that this will efface the reality of these dreadful minutes. He feels the urge to run away, to bury his burning head in the snow, and to see and hear nothing more. But he doesn’t act on it. Instead, he does something else… All of a sudden, he feels as though his dislocated self has parted company with his body. He has a sense of floating, light as a feather, free and formless. He’s looking down on his body like it belongs to someone else, and sees himself straighten up, reach into the leather satchel at his side, pull out a pistol, release the safety catch and slowly, ever so slowly and without trembling, raise it to eye level and take aim. He sees the finger tense on the trigger, hears from afar the report of the shots, and watches the bullets fly straight into the terrible grimacing faces there in the fiery cage. And with an ardent rush of sympathy, he senses that the person down there has done something good and charitable but at the same time something terrible; and a warm feeling of contentment washes over him. That’s not me, no, that’s not me! Fate has spared me from having to make this dreadful decision. It’s not me!