“Zdrastvuite, tovarich!” Captain Ruell, who spoke impeccable Russian, greeted our astonished visitor.
My men searched the pilot. I looked into his identification book but handed it back to him. And when Schulze gave me the officer’s Tokarev automatic, I only removed the bullets and returned his gun as well. He was so surprised at my unexpected behavior that his chin dropped. He tried to smile but he could not. He only managed to draw his lips in a paralytic grin.
“The war is over,” he muttered. “No more shooting,” he added after a moment, imitating the sound of a submachine gun. “No tatatata.”
His face showed so much terror that we could not help smiling. He must have been told that Germans were man-eaters.
“No more tatatata, eh?” Erich Schulze chuckled, mocking the Russian.
The pilot nodded quickly. “Da, da… No more war.”
Schulze poked him in the belly. “No more war but a minute before you wanted to bomb the daylight out of us here.”
“Ja, ja,” the Russian repeated, his eyes glued to Schulze’s SS lapel.
Erich poked him gently again, and the Russian paled.
“Leave him alone,” Captain Ruell interposed. “You are scaring the shit out of him.”
“Sure,” Eisner added, “and we don’t have many extra pants up here, Erich.”
The captain spoke to the pilot briefly and his presence seemed to lessen the Russian’s fear. “Don’t let the SS shoot me, officer,” he pleaded. “I have been flying for only eight months, and I want to go home to Mother.”
“We have been fighting for five years. Imagine how much we would like to return home,” Captain Ruell replied with a bitter smile.
“Don’t let the SS shoot me…”
“The SS won’t shoot you.”
Schulze offered the Russian a cigarette. “Here, smoke! It will do you good.”
“Thanks.”
The pilot grinned, taking the cigarette with shaking fingers.
Erich opened his canteen, gulped some rum, then wiped the canteen on his sleeve and offered it to the pilot. “Here, tovarich… Drink good SS vodka.”
Realizing that his life was not in danger the Russian relaxed.
“Our commander says that you don’t want to surrender,” he said, shifting his eyes from face to face as though seeking our approval for what he was saying. “You must surrender… There are two divisions in the valley; forty tanks and heavy artillery are expected to come in a day or two.”
“Tovarich, you have already told us enough for a court-martial,” Schulze exclaimed, slapping the pilot on the back.
“You shouldn’t tell the enemy what you have or don’t have.”
Captain Ruell interpreted for him.
“I only said that heavy artillery is on the way.”
“Who cares?” Eisner shrugged. “There is a mountain between your artillery and us.”
“The mountain will not help you.”
The Russian shook his head. He turned and pointed toward a ridge five miles to the southeast. “The artillery is going up there.”
“Nonsense!” I said. “There is no road.”
“There is a road,” Captain Ruell interposed, “right up to hill Five-O-Six. We had four Bofors there in early March.”
Looking at the map I realized that Captain Ruell was right and what the Russian pilot was saying had a ring of truth. Should the Soviet commander mount some heavy artillery on that hill, he could indeed shell our plateau by direct fire.
We gave the Russian a hearty meal and allowed him to leave. He was immensely happy and promised to do everything for us should we meet again after surrendering. “Food, vodka, cigarettes, Kamerad. My name is Fjodr Andrejevich. I will tell our commander that you are good soldiers and should be well treated.”
“Sure you will,” Eisner growled, watching the Russian leave. “You just tell your commander and you will be shot before the sun is down as a bloody Fascist yourself.”
The pilot walked away slowly, turning back every now and then as though still expecting a bullet in the back. Having passed our last roadblock it must have occurred to him that he was still alive and unhurt, and he began to race downhill as I had never seen a man run. Eisner was not very enthusiastic about the Russian’s departure.
“He saw everything we have up here,” he remarked with barely concealed disapproval in his voice.
“We had no choice but to let him go,” Colonel Steinmetz challenged him sharply. “The war is over, Herr Untersturmführer.”
“Not for me, Herr Oberst,” Eisner replied quietly. “For me the war will be over when I greet my wife and two sons for the first time since August 1943, and it isn’t over for the Russian either. He came here flying not the white flag but a fighter bomber.”
“I haven’t seen my family since June 1943,” the colonel remarked.
I drew Eisner aside. “You should not worry about the Ivan,” I told him with an air of confidence. “What can he tell? That we have men, weapons, tanks, and artillery? The more he tells the less eager they will be to come up here.”
I put an arm around his shoulder. “Bernard, we’ve killed so many Russians. We can surely afford to let one individual go.”
He grinned. “I have read somewhere what the American settlers used to say about the Indians, Hans. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. I think that is also true of the Bolsheviks.”
“Maybe the pilot was not a Bolshevik?”
“Maybe he wasn’t—yet. But if you ask me, Hans, I can tell you that anyone who is working for Stalin is game for me.”
He lit a cigarette, offered me one, then went on. “I know that we are defeated and that there will be no Fatherland to speak of for a long time to come. For all we know the Allies might break up the Reich into fifty little principalities, just as it was five hundred years ago. We scare them stiff, even without weapons, even in defeat. But I cannot suffer the thought of having been defeated by a rotten, primitive, lice-ridden Communist mob. I know that no conqueror in history was ever soft on the conquered enemy. We might survive the American and the British but never the Soviet. Stalin won’t be satisfied with what he may loot now. He will not only take his booty, but he will try to take our very souls, our thoughts, our national identity. I know them. I’ve been their prisoner. It was for only five days but even then they tried to turn me into a bloody traitor. The Russians are mind snatchers, Hans. They will not only rape our women, they will also turn them into Communists afterwards. Stalin knows how to do it and now he will have all the time on earth. He is going to increase the pressure inch by inch. I could gun down anyone who is helping Stalin.”
“You would have quite a few people to gun down, Bernard. Starting with the British and finishing with the Americans. They have not only helped Stalin, but also brought him back from his deathbed and made him a giant.”
“Stalin will be most obliged to his bourgeois allies,” Eisner sneered. “Just wait and see how Stalin will pay for the American convoys. Give him a couple of years. Mister Churchill and Mister Truman are going to enjoy a few sleepless nights for Mister Roosevelt’s folly.”
“That won’t help us much now, Bernard!”