SS General (4 page)

We waited until the bridge was clear, and then crept away to the shelter of some rocks. Dawn was drifting across the sky in feathery pink trails and I felt sorry about the unsuspecting guy in the sentry box. Tiny and Porta were still having words on the question of precedence. I don't know which of them finally set the thing off, but the noise was shattering. Seconds later my eardrums were still ringing, the sound still banging from side to side of my head. I picked myself up and looked toward the bridge--and then looked again. The damned thing was still there! The main supports had been blown clean away and the metal superstructure was a twisted heap, but the bridge itself, the actual span of the bridge, had been dropped bodily into the water and now lay only a few feet below the surface. It was a ruined bridge, certainly; but still, at a pinch, a very usable bridge.

Gregor let out a shrill hoot of laughter and went running across it, with the rest of us following, singing and shouting and splashing like a crowd of punch-drunk loons.

"We've sunk the bridge, we've sunk the bridge!" chanted Gregor.

At no point did the water rise above our knees!

"So what the fuck do we do now?" demanded Porta.

"We pull ourselves together and get the hell out," said the Old Man grimly. "I've got a feeling this place is going to attract a lot of attention any minute now."

Even as he spoke, we heard the sound of men's voices, and we dived of one accord into the cover of the trees. At least we were going back by forest and not by marsh, which was a comfort--but only a scanty one, because in a matter of hours we were hopelessly lost. We trailed up and down, in and out of the trees, across streams and along little twisting paths that came to dead ends. In all that time we met no one, and when at last we came to a clearing and saw an old fellow chopping wood outside a hut, we were in no mood to bother with evasive action. Instead, we pushed Porta forward as our best interpreter, and he gave the old boy an amiable one-toothed grin of unparalleled villainy and addressed him in Russian.

"Good day,
tovaritch!"

The little old
tovaritch
slowly lifted his head. He was so old, it almost hurt to look at him. His skin was parched, the wrinkles scored so deeply that they were like gaping ravines, but his eyes were a bright, clear blue as they looked Porta wonderingly up and down.

"Ah, it's you, is it?" he said, letting fall his ax. "And where have you been all these months?"

Porta is fortunately a natural liar. He doesn't have to stop and think about it, he marches right in with both feet.

"I've been away at the war, remember?" he said, very cocky and sure of himself. "And where've you been hiding, Grandpa? The Jerries are back again, didn't you know that?"

"Ah, yes?" The blue eyes flickered thoughtfully over the rest of us and back to Porta. "How's your mother getting on?"

"The old lady's fine," said Porta.

"Good, good--I like to hear of old friends. Have you killed many Germans?"

"A fair number," said Porta modestly, and he held out a pack of
machorkas.

The old man shook his head. "Army tobacco," he said deprecatingly.

He picked up his ax and turned back to his wood without another word. Porta hunched his shoulders and we went on our way, tramping blindly through the pine trees.

A couple of hours later we found ourselves back at the bridge, which was now a noisy hive of activity.

"This is futile," declared the Old Man. "To hell with playing follow-my-leader in the woods, I'm going to take a chance and follow the river."

There was a very real risk of bumping into Russian troops, but by this time we were all past caring. We had half suffocated in the stinking marshes, risked our lives crawling about underneath a bridge that refused to die, walked our legs to stumps among the pine trees, and wanted only to return to the comparative safety and comfort of our own lines.

Two days later, under the protection of whatever blessed saint it is who looks after those who have come to the end of their tether, we staggered home again and the Old Man made his report--"mission accomplished"--without either batting an eyelid or troubling anyone with tedious explanations. As he said, he didn't want to upset them. And besides, we had blown up the bridge as we had been told, and it certainly wasn't our fault if it had come down again--in one piece.

The winter was now really closing in, and we experienced the first blizzards of the season. We still had no greatcoats, and we had to pad our uniforms with newspaper and pieces of cardboard and other junk to keep out the worst of the razor-sharp winds. Rations were dropped to us by parachute. No new troops arrived and orders came through that we were on no account to waste ammunition. Food was cut down daily. Men were starving and freezing, and the first cases of frostbite were already being reported--some induced deliberately, in a final, despairing attempt to be relieved from the hell of the Russian front. Two men in our own company were found to be sleeping in wet socks and were summarily executed in the Tatar Forest.

Not even Heide spoke now of the Great Victory of Stalingrad, and the propaganda machine had been ominously silent for some weeks.

The SS Standartenfuhrer, with a pleasure that he did not trouble to conceal, tossed the top-secret telegram onto the table and nodded at SS Sturmbannfuhrer Lippert.

"Take a look at that, Michel. What do you say to it?"

Lippert picked up the telegram. A smile slowly crossed his face. "It looks as if we're in business at last!*'

"Dead right we are." Eicke picked it up again and reread it. "Well, those bastards in the Army have had it coming to them, it was only a question of time. The Fuhrer's a reasonable man, but he can't be expected to tolerate traitors in his midst . . ."

The large Porsche bearing Eicke's standard pulled slowly out of Dachau and turned off toward Munich, with Eicke and Lippert lolling in the back seat. They stopped on the way to pick up Hauptsturmfuhrer Schmausser, and at 1500 hours exactly the three SS officers arrived at Stadelheim prison in Munich. They were taken at once to the office of the governor, Herr Koch, and without troubling themselves with any tiresome preliminaries, demanded that the prisoner General Rohm be delivered up to them.

Koch regarded the three men distastefully. It was plain that they had been drinking, and he was not at all sure how to deal with them. He began uncompromisingly by ignoring their demand for Rohm, banging his fist so hard on his desk that his inkwell overturned, and ordering them
to
leave his office and his prison forthwith, unless they themselves wished to be detained in one of his cells. He then set back to await developments.

For the next few minutes the ball was tossed back and forth over the net--Eicke demanding Rohm, Koch refusing Rohm--with neither side gaining any advantage. Finally, to settle matters, Koch picked up the telephone and rang straight through to the Minister of Justice. The Minister of Justice heard the story with a sense of mounting indignation and personal outrage, until he could almost be seen to grow purple in the face and to be on the verge of an apoplectic fit, at which point Eicke leaned across the desk and snatched the receiver away from the unsuspecting Koch.

"I may as well inform you straight away, Minister," he snarled into the telephone, "that I am here on the personal orders of the Fuhrer. I have no time to waste bandying words with petty officialdom, and if I meet with any more attempts to sabotage the Fuhrer's instructions I don't need to remind you that there are always plenty of free places waiting to be filled at Dachau!"

He thrust the receiver back into Koch's still outstretched hand. There was a long, trembling pause before the minister spoke. Koch nodded, his face white and furrowed. He dialed another number, and without a word to Eicke, gave instructions to the prison staff to allow the three SS officers access to Rohm.

SA Stabschef Ernst Rohm was sitting on a low wooden bench in cell 474, staring into space. He was naked from the waist up, but it was airless in the tiny cell and he was perspiring heavily.

Eicke smiled at him and held out a friendly hand. "How goes it, Ernst?"

Rohm hunched a shoulder. "Not so good," he said. "Not so good."

Eicke sat down beside him on the bench. "Warm in here, isn't it?" He jerked a thumb toward the window. Through the small pane of speckled glass could be seen the cloudless sky blue of that hot June of 1934. "Even worse out there," he said with a grin. "Half the dames are going about without any underwear; you walk up the stairs behind them, it gets you in a muck sweat!"

Rohm attempted a smile. He patted his face with a torn and dirty handkerchief. "Have you come for me, Theo? Has the Fuhrer heard I've been arrested?" He looked searchingly at his old friend. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to have done. Some of the guards have been talking about a revolution, I can't make head or tail of it. What revolution? Has there really been any revolution? Has the Army gone and done something stupid?"

Eicke pulled a face. He removed his helmet, carefully wiped it, put it back on again. The death's head insignia stared straight up at the ceiling.

"You shouldn't worry yourself with prison gossip," he advised. "You've more important things to think about right now."

"I just want to know what I'm doing here!" snapped Rohm. "I want to know if the Fuhrer's heard about it."

"Oh, he's heard all right," said Eicke soothingly. "It was the Fuhrer who told me to come along and see you. He told me to give you this." He pulled out his revolver and laid it carefully on the bench between them. "One thing nobody can deny about the Fuhrer, he's always loyal to his old friends. Even when they're in trouble, like you are, Ernst. Especially when they're in trouble like you are--you know what I mean?" He patted the revolver. "He's giving you a way out, Ernst. Be best if you took it"

Rohm stared uncomprehendingly at Eicke. Without refocusing, his eyes slipped away from his friend and down to the revolver. A big black revolver glistening with grease. Slowly it grew clear to him; it swam into focus.

"But that's madness!" he said. His eyes snapped back to Eicke. "That's madness, Theo, and you know it! I've always been one of the Fuhrer's loyalest followers. I've put the Party above everything, above my wife, above my children, above myself--I've sacrificed everything I've got for the Party." He suddenly caught hold of Eicke's shoulders and began shaking him. "Didn't I save the Fuhrer on two occasions when the revolution looked like crushing us? Didn't I? Didn't I save him at Stuttgart? When you and all the others ran off and left him, and Wollweber and his Communists were having it all their own way--wasn't it me who stayed behind and rescued him?"

"Yes, yes," said Eicke soothingly. He removed the prisoner's frenzied hands from his shoulders and stood up. "Unfortunately, my poor Ernst, you have a tendency to live in the past. The Fuhrer is concerned only with the present. All I know is that you've been expelled from the Party and are no longer regarded as--ah--one of the faithful, as it were." He smiled and smoothed down his uniform. "Out of deference, I shall now retire and leave the final arrangements to you. All I ask is that you don't make things more difficult than you have to--we are, after all, old friends, are we not? And I can promise you that this really is the best way out. Look-- you can see for yourself the way the wind is blowing."

From his pocket he pulled out a page of the
Volkischer Beobachter
and handed it to Rohm. In the largest type the printer could provide were the words: STABSCHEF ROHM ARRESTED. FULL SCALE PURGE OF SA ON ORDERS OF FUHRER: ALL TRAITORS MUST DIE!

Rohm looked across at Eicke, his face white and his eyes blank with disbelief.

"If this is true--" He waved a despairing hand and for a moment he faltered and seemed unable to go on. "If this is true, then it means the man's nothing but a murderer--it means you're all insane--it means it's all been for nothing."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," returned Eicke cheerfully. "Don't be naive, Ernst. You know as well as I that you risk your neck when you start playing politics. You today, me tomorrow--who knows? As far as I'm concerned, we're all playing our luck, and yours has just happened to run out a bit sooner than mine . . ."

He raised his hand in farewell and went out to the corridor, where Lippert and Schmausser were waiting for him.

"Well?" said Lippert.

Eicke shrugged. "Give him time. The idea's hardly sunk in yet."

They gave him fifteen minutes, but not a sound was heard. It was cheerless and stuffy in the prison corridor and the three SS men began to lose patience. Eicke went back into the cell and frowned with annoyance; Rohm was still sitting on his bench, and the revolver was still lying untouched by his side.

"All right," said Eicke. "You don't feel like cooperating, so we'll have to do it the hard way. It makes no difference to me; I just thought you might prefer to die with dignity." He picked up the revolver and gestured at the prisoner. "Come on, on your feet, let's get it over with."

A little unsteady, Rohm staggered upright. He placed himself against the wall, directly beneath the window with its dirty pane of glass and its mocking glimpse of the free blue sky. Eicke raised his arm and coldly took aim.

At the last moment, Rohm cried out, "Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer!"

Eicke watched dispassionately as his old friend and colleague sank slowly to the floor, his back leaving a damp mark as it slid down the wall of the cell. He walked over to look at him. Rohm was not quite dead. Three months ago he had been one of the most powerful men in Germany, one of Hitler's closest friends, and now he lay twisting and moaning on the filthy floor of a Munich prison cell. Eicke turned him over with the toe of his boot. Agonized eyes stared up at him. Calmly he pointed his revolver at the man's temple and blew half his head away.

Journey by Sled

For some days now, life at the front had settled into a routine which, for the old hands, was at least tolerable if not exactly luxurious. For the newcomers, of course, it probably seemed like hell on earth, but they either learned quickly or not at all. When the enemy machine guns started up, you got down and you stayed down, a simple fact of life with which we were so well acquainted that we did it as a reflex action, without being consciously aware that we were under fire. We had even grown accustomed to heavy shelling and accepted it as a matter of course. We could hear the shells as they were fired and had almost learned to predict with accuracy where they would land. The new boys thought we were mad, and we watched pityingly as they either frightened themselves into hysterics or got their heads blown off.