Last Flight to Stalingrad by Graham Hurley (simple ebook reader .TXT) 📗

wife and three fine children. He’d never waste a moment even thinking about the likes of Lida Baarova.

‘He liked you, Nehmann. I could tell.’

It was Messner. He’d emerged from nowhere, a cigarette between his fingers. The darkness softened his ruined face.

‘Should I be flattered?’ Nehmann enquired.

‘Yes. Getting his time is one thing. Gaining his confidence, his interest, is quite another. He likes people who answer back.’

Nehmann nodded, trying to mask his irritation. This was like having his homework marked, he thought.

‘So, what’s been happening?’ He nodded vaguely towards the east.

‘Good news. The best, in fact. Sixteenth Panzer are already on the river. They arrived yesterday afternoon. A good pair of binoculars, and you’re peering into Asia. From the Don to the Volga in a single day? Remarkable. A couple of our fighter pilots put on a bit of a display for their benefit. Victory rolls. Other stuff. You should write it up, Nehmann. They’re both back on base here. Kurt Ebener’s available tomorrow morning. I can fix for you to see him.’

‘You’re telling me the city’s fallen?’

‘No. Sixteenth Panzer are out on their own, north of Stalingrad, but it’s just a question of time now. The river crossings within the city are still open. If the Ivans are wise, they’ll bale out while they can. Otherwise we’re going to be taking another million prisoners.’

Nehmann nodded. Yakov Dzhugashvili, he thought. Stalin’s son.

‘There’s a man called Helmut,’ he said. ‘Propaganda Company. I’m sure you know him.’

‘And?’

‘Where would I find him?’

‘Now?’ Messner was frowning. ‘At this time of night?’

Nehmann stepped closer, put a hand briefly on Messner’s arm, a gesture of reassurance.

‘We’re journalists, Georg.’ He gave Messner’s arm a squeeze. ‘We never sleep.’

*

Helmut’s tent lay in the same quarter of the airfield as Nehmann’s. Messner drove him across. Like Nehmann, Helmut had the tent to himself. To Messner’s evident irritation, his oil lamp was still casting long shadows over the canvas.

Messner brought the Jeep to a halt.

‘You want me to come in?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then tell him it’s late. The oil in that lamp won’t last forever. You hear what I’m saying, Nehmann? You’ll give him the message?’

Nehmann fought the urge to laugh. Messner shrugged, gunned the engine and accelerated away. Nehmann waited until the lights of the vehicle had disappeared behind a line of nearby Heinkels. After a while, he could hear nothing but the soft keening of the wind and he spent several minutes immobile, his head tilted back, gazing at the million tiny lights pricking the blackness of the night sky. He was trying to imagine what it must be like to be a Russian, living in Stalingrad, waiting for the German axe to fall. Shackled to history’s guillotine, these people might themselves be searching the heavens, desperate for some sign of a reprieve. A shooting star burned briefly overhead, a leaving a trail of brightness that flickered and then died. Gone, Nehmann thought. Kaputt.

Inside the tent, Helmut was lying on his camp bed, fully clothed. He appeared to be dozing. There was a book open on his chest, rising and falling as he slumbered on. Nehmann closed the tent flap behind him and stepped across to the bed. The book was War and Peace,a German translation, much thumbed.

‘What do you want, Nehmann?’ Helmut wasn’t asleep.

‘Tell me about Tolstoy. Does he help at all?’

‘He always helps. This is my second time through. But you didn’t come for that, did you?’

Nehmann didn’t answer. Instead, he settled into the tent’s only chair, low-slung, canvas stretched over a wooden frame. He wanted to know how long Helmut had been with Sixth Army.

‘Too long. This bloody war goes on and on. Last winter was a bitch. You can’t believe how cold it gets. Minus forty-five degrees? Some days you end up pissing on your hands, just to get them moving again. Loading film can be a nightmare. Your fingers just don’t work any more and the only thing to do is keep melting snow, keep drinking, keep filling your bladder because that way you give yourself a minute or two to get a fresh roll in the camera. Sixteen-millimetre film? Those tiny sprocket holes? Piss on your fingers and it’s just possible. Believe it or not, we time each other. A minute, maximum, then you’re frozen stiff again.’

Nehmann nodded. As a kid, learning the basic skills of butchery, he’d been banished to an outhouse in the depths of winter. The cold in the mountains could be brutal, especially when the wind got up. He’d shared this arctic space with hanging sides of cattle and sheep, and he remembered the rough grain of the big table, scarred and bloodstained, and the long minutes it took to breathe life back into his frozen fingertips. Sometimes you had to saw the frozen meat from the bone and leave it to thaw out once you could find a fire. That bad.

Helmut had a bottle of vodka. He’d been with General von Bock when Army Group Centre’s advance had come to a halt in front of Moscow, back around Christmas. The news, all of a sudden, had been worse than bad – Zhukov’s armies bursting out of nowhere to chase the Wehrmacht away – and there were no pictures to feed the Glee Machine that was Goebbels’ Promi.

‘You called it that? The Glee Machine?’ Nehmann had never heard the term.

‘We did. In private. It made no difference, of course. When you tell Berlin the truth they don’t want to know, and when they insist you send stuff back, good news stuff, you start making it up. We settled on a theme in the end. How to get the better of winter. How to survive January. It was all campfires and huge stews and close-ups of grinning soldiers who badly needed a shave. There was a corporal who played the mouth organ and that helped. Kraft durch Freude.Strength through joy. Our guys looked like a bunch of Boy Scouts. Berlin? Delighted.’

Nehmann smiled. They’d done the third glass now. Helmut had coyly