Front Lines, Germany Prime
4/5 November 1985
Hennecke felt sick.
He had no idea what was wrong with him, but he wasn’t the only man in the trenches to be suffering. He’d thrown up everything in his stomach shortly after the nuclear blasts, then dry-heaved several times through the night; his head hurt, his body felt dizzy and he’d had real problems just getting up after an uncomfortable night’s sleep. There was no food or drink in the trenches, save for snow they’d collected and melted for drinking water. It hadn’t made them feel any better.
“Get up,” a voice snarled. “Now!”
Hennecke glared, but slowly stumbled to his feet. The speaker was a young officer, too young to have seen any real combat. He looked so perfect, as if he’d stepped off a recruiting poster, that Hennecke hated him with an intensity that surprised him. It was all he could do not to stagger forward and try to vomit on the newcomer. But he barely had the energy to stand upright.
“Help the others to stand,” the officer barked. Each word sent a shock of pain through Hennecke’s aching head. “See who can’t stand under their own power.”
His head spinning, Hennecke did his best to obey orders. A couple of dozen men looked as though they could walk, although only two of them looked coordinated enough to march in unison. The others were either too ill to move — he felt a chill running down his spine as he saw them shaking with fever, despite the bitter cold — or dead. He couldn’t help feeling sick himself as he saw a big soldier, a man so large he could practically pass for a gorilla, screaming like a baby as he shuddered violently, then fell silent. By the time Hennecke checked him, he was dead.
He froze in horror as he stumbled across Scharführer Kuhn. The man was lying on the ground, his hair falling out… he stared up at Hennecke, his eyes silently begging for life… or death. Hennecke could do nothing. He’d honestly believed that Kuhn was too tough to be wounded. But now he was dying, poisoned by… what? He didn’t want to think about what happened to those too close to nuclear explosions, but it seemed as though he had no choice.
The water, he thought, feeling a flicker of horror. We collected poisoned water and drank it.
But there was nothing he could do, either for Kuhn or himself. Tottering forward, he carefully removed Kuhn’s pistol and strapped it to his belt, pocketing the two ammunition clips Kuhn had kept in his belt. Kuhn made no protest, something that frightened Hennecke more than one of his savage rages — and beatings. The man he’d seen knock a rowdy stormtrooper down with a single punch was now as weak as a kitten… and dying. Hennecke was torn between giving Kuhn a mercy kill and leaving him to die. What should he do?
“Strip the corpses,” the officer barked. “And then strip anyone too weak to walk!”
Hennecke swallowed hard as he realised the truth. Whatever had poisoned them — radiation or not — those orders made it clear what was about to happen. Soldiers who were beyond salvation were to be left to die — including him, if he collapsed. Gritting his teeth, fighting to make his hands work despite his pounding headache, he forced himself to stagger over to the nearest corpse and start to undress it. But it was nearly impossible to strip the body…
It felt like hours before a team of newcomers showed up, wearing baggy protective outfits that he hadn’t seen — or used — outside training exercises that felt as though they’d taken place a millennia ago. They had radiation poisoning then, he realised; he hadn’t wanted to accept it, but there was no choice. The Führer’s nuclear weapons had poisoned their own men…
“Get some food,” the officer snarled. The handful of walking men hurried over to the food cart, passing a trio of stormtroopers on the way. “And make sure you get back here to continue the work.”
Hennecke was too tired to say or do anything, but sip the broth they’d been provided. It was warm, crammed with pieces of meat and vegetables, yet he couldn’t help thinking that it tasted of manure. Perhaps their food, too, had been poisoned by the sleet of radiation. He wished, suddenly, that he knew more about radiation poisoning, although what he did know was more than enough to make his hair want to fall out. But now, with far too many men losing their hair — or worse — it wasn’t anything like as funny as it seemed. He still giggled helplessly as he finished his broth. Thankfully, the dry-retching had come to an end.
He heard a shot and glanced back, sharply. The stormtroopers were moving from body to body, systematically shooting each and every one of the wounded in the head. Hennecke knew just how ruthless the SS could be — he’d been there when an entire village had been slaughtered for harbouring rebels — but killing their own men so casually was a whole new dimension of ruthlessness. He watched in utter horror as a stormtrooper shot Kuhn, leaving the man’s body to lie on the ground, then forced himself to look away.
They sent us here to die, he thought. And then they killed us.
He found himself torn between the urge to laugh and the urge to start crying. He’d thought he was serving the Reich, but the Reich had turned on him. No rebel had killed him, no rebel had even come close to killing him… he’d been killed by his own side. He didn’t know enough about radiation poisoning to be sure, but he thought it was always fatal. Did he have a hope of surviving long enough to get medical treatments? Would he even be given medical treatments?
I have to get better, he told himself, numbly. But how?
The men were pushed back to work as soon as they finished their scanty meal, digging a large pit and burying their former comrades. Hennecke had plenty of experience digging mass graves, but without the proper tools the job was nightmarish. The newcomers didn’t do anything to help, either. They just killed two men who collapsed on the job and couldn’t even begin to get up. Hennecke thought about drawing his stolen pistol and shooting them — or at least the damned officer — but his hands were too weak. He wouldn’t have a hope in hell of shooting even one of them before they shot him down.
There was no rest even after the mass grave was dug. The remainder of the corpses were stripped and buried, then covered with a thin layer of earth. Hennecke doubted they’d remain buried for very long — there were plenty of animals who’d dig them up even if the rebels didn’t come to see who’d been buried in the grave — but it seemed to be enough for the officer, who ordered them to follow him east. His legs still felt weak as he walked, yet the thought of being killed if he dropped out of line kept him going. The officer didn’t seem to care.
He was probably well away from the blasts, Hennecke thought, savagely. Or perhaps he was just out of training when the war began.
The landscape had been utterly devastated by the blasts. Hennecke had travelled down the roads during the build-up for the first offensive — they’d been typical roads at the time — but now they were badly damaged, bridges knocked down and pavement torn up, leaving them impassable to anything short of a panzer. The trees by the side of the roads had been incinerated or knocked down; a number of burned-out vehicles bore mute witness to the deaths of a number of unfortunate civilians — or soldiers — caught in the open. He wondered, numbly, if the cars had belonged to higher-ups in Warsaw fleeing the war, although he had to admit it was more likely that the vehicles had been commandeered by the military. But he clung to the former thought anyway as bitter resentment gnawed at his soul. It was all that kept him going.