Black Camp 21 Read online

  The following afternoon, he was waiting in the garden again; alone, and wearing a white shirt, navy flannels and his father’s panama hat.

  ‘The army hasn’t changed me. I’m afraid soldiers are very dull.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ She smiled. ‘But you don’t look like a soldier today.’

  Both of them sensed that time might be precious.

  On that second night, they had talked until dawn. On the third night, they’d ridden a tram into the heart of the old city and linked arms to navigate the cobbles through medieval streets. On the fourth, they’d danced drunkenly in a basement club, sharing cigarettes and brandy, before lurching back through the blackened city to the professor’s silent house. On the doorstep, they’d kissed deeply, and the following night Max had knocked softly on the attic door until it opened and Alize let him in.

  Although for both of them the experience was new, necessity required rapid progress. At first, in the dark, they had proceeded only by the touch of trembling fingers. Then, under the muted glow of a paraffin lamp, they had examined each other’s bodies with the rapt concentration of the uninitiated; making love frantically, inexpertly, while moths battered their wings against the scorching glass.

  ‘I used to look forward to Saturday mornings in your house.’ The sheets were flung back. Hartmann’s right arm lay across her breasts.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he moaned. ‘Please don’t. It’s too embarrassing.’

  ‘You used to make me lie on my stomach on the floor to read a book . . .’

  ‘Enough.’ He had turned his head into the pillow.

  ‘. . . then you’d sit beside me and slide up my skirt until my knickers were showing.’

  ‘How could I forget? It was amazing. You wore silk.’

  ‘Did I? Was it? Really? You were twelve. I nearly told my father.

  I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You do now . . .’

  Later, as Hartmann stared silently at the girl’s pale skin, Alize had bent down to kiss the raw welt of his scar.

  ‘Will you tell me about it?’ she asked.

  ‘Not now,’ he replied.

  For two days, they scarcely left the attic. Not until they were certain Max’s father had gone to work did they venture downstairs, wandering naked through sun-streaked rooms, stirring as if from a coma; looking for food but eating little and sleeping only when overrun by a languor neither could resist. For most of the time, they talked about their past lives. Not until the seventh night did the present contaminate their bubble.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve rather run out of excuses,’ he’d said. ‘They want me at barracks.’

  When she turned to kiss him the next morning, there was a note on her pillow. I think I may love you. I’ll be back.

  It had felt empowering to pace back to the station through the Königsplatz in his Waffen SS uniform, and everywhere he looked, people had seemed genuinely happy. For those few unlikely days with Alize in Munich, he’d felt a faint stirring of enthusiasm for their war.

  By the following evening, at a training camp west of Leipzig, that fragile optimism was floundering again in an organisation he scarcely recognised.

  Russia had changed everything. Entire divisions had simply evaporated. Some people were saying that over a million had been killed and that two entire German armies were facing slow extinction in the streets of Stalingrad.

  Koenig, he now knew, was not one of them. Somehow, his friend had made it back and dashed off a letter from his own secret training camp in Germany. Can’t say much and I can’t see us meeting for some time either. But I’m well, Max – I’ve got a medal – and very much looking forward to kicking the British next. See you when we parade through London, perhaps!

  With a smile, Hartmann had folded away the note.

  For everyone in the SS, old loyalties were being reassigned. After returning from Munich, Hartmann had been attached to the 1st SS Panzer Division, the so-called Leibstandarte, and from the clues in Erich’s letter Koenig was now in the 12th SS Panzer Division; him and all the rest of Germany’s death-or-glory teenagers. I’m so very relieved you got out of there, Hartmann wrote back that night. Everything’s all very top secret but I think you’re right. I think we might be heading west. What happened? How many Russians did you kill? Tell me over a beer in Soho some time. Fingers crossed this letter will find you. Love Max. There was no point in telling him about Alize. So far as he knew, Koenig had never had a girlfriend. He wouldn’t understand. PS I’m loving my toy tiger, he wrote instead.

  The censors would delete the postscript anyway.

  Every day now was spent inside a new weapon which made him feel like a young god. In the thick woodland around Wallendorf, Hartmann’s perennial misgivings were yet again in retreat.

  The crews called it Königstiger – King Tiger. The top brass called it Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B – Tiger Tank 2.

  Whatever it was, Hartmann could calmly obliterate a target from almost two miles, while incoming shellfire skimmed off its steel skin. Ancient trees crumpled in its path like supplicants, and its brain-deafening power ignited his dormant belligerence. If they could ever eradicate its endless breakdowns, if the air raids ever stopped, and if the factories could build enough of them, then maybe Koenig’s prediction would be vindicated. Maybe they would be rumbling towards Buckingham Palace in their tanks.

  But then, as the summer receded, the Allied attacks stepped back up and the bombs began raining on Munich. If you can get here for a few days then I really think you should, wrote his father.

  Over five months had passed without a word between Alize and Hartmann. The one time he’d started a letter, his words had stalled on the realisation that he barely knew her. I know what you think of me, the professor went on. But I’m not asking for myself. It’s Alize. She’s still here and she’s terrified. You must come. You have to come.

  It had not been easy to get back.

  Hartmann’s division – maybe the whole German army – was on standby for a move. No one was saying where. Quite probably, no one knew. This was Hitler’s private war, Hartmann had decided, as his train creaked through Munich’s outer ring of low-rise factories. For twelve hours he’d shivered alone in a compartment without light. Over the rooftops and the smouldering ruins he could make out the guard tower at the Dachau camp.

  ‘For queers and commies,’ his father had once told him. ‘And Jehovah’s Witnesses.’ Beyond that, he had not asked.

  This time, the old city was different. There was no music in the Hauptbahnhof; no stalls selling flowers on the streets. The giant swastikas still flapped, but it was a raw wind which shook them into crimson ripples and carved shapes in the drifting snow along the pavement. Against the wintry sky, the shelled-out remains of the cathedral looked like a hag’s broken tooth. According to local folklore, it was the devil’s spirit, not air, which swirled around its ruined cavity and tunnelled deep into the icy hearts of shopkeepers. This is a city of demons, he thought, turning his collar up against the cold.

  Once again, he had chosen to walk, using the time to examine his feelings. Perhaps it had been unfair not to tell them he was coming, but there’d been no choice. Two days’ leave was all he’d got. After that, he might never be back. And for all he knew, she’d forgotten about him already.

  From the street, every window was black, and when he eased the front door open the hallway felt damp. Moving deeper into the house, he heard voices raised against the sound of music flowing from a radio. Quietly he tiptoed on, drawn by the melody and by the comforting smell of new-baked bread which streamed from the rear kitchen.

  As he drew closer, he stopped. The door was half open. Sitting at the table, oblivious of Max’s presence, his father sliced an imaginary conductor’s baton through the air. With her back to him, Alize was pulling a tray from the oven. From across the room, he felt washed by the sudden surge of sweet-smelling heat.

  And when she turned, he saw, and knew everyt
hing in a heartbeat.

  3

  6 August 1944

  06:10 hours

  In his wood near Falaise, another match was scorching his fingers.

  As the phosphorus spluttered, he pressed his lips to the photograph before gently folding his father’s silver case and returning it to his pocket. Only half of his last cigarette remained. From its end hung a comma of ash which crumbled over his hand as he sucked hard and filled his chest. Clamping his teeth tight, he held the breath for as long as he could. Before the war, three minutes would have been easy, but hunger had made him weak.

  As his lungs collapsed, water stung his eyes, and thin geysers of smoke began leaking out between his teeth. Soon enough, he would have to stir himself. One more drag and it would be gone.

  All around him, he could hear the deep rumble of tanks firing up. Hidden by the trees, crews of men were slipping through their hatches and shutting themselves in. From where he sat with his back to the trunk of a fallen oak, he could see two officers stretching a map across the grass and, as he listened, the crackle of mild panic began to hop from radio to radio.

  Two more minutes. One last drag.

  Behind closed eyes, he remembered the bubbling coffee and the sibilant whisper of burning gas. He could see his father turning off the radio and striding out of the kitchen. Between her extended hands, Alize was holding three golden discs of flatbread on a tray. For the first time – that he’d seen – her hair was tied back and her anxious face appeared flushed from the heat. Silently, Hartmann had followed the girl’s eyes down across her flour-dusted apron.

  ‘You should have told me sooner.’

  ‘I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know what you’d think.’

  After that, they had embraced stiffly, each one encumbered by their ignorance of the other.

  ‘Are you pleased?’

  ‘Never more so.’

  They’d been lovers for a week, and strangers ever since. Now she was carrying a child he might never see. Wiping tears from his face, he cupped her chin gently in his hand and kissed her.

  There were no doubts in Hartmann’s mind that the baby was his. Nor had his feelings for Alize been diminished by the shock. If anything, silhouetted in the kitchen’s glow, she seemed more alluring and noble than she had in the summer; more desirable than she had when he was twelve.

  In a war from which he felt hopelessly disconnected, Alize might just be his salvation.

  ‘We have to make this right. Before I go back. Agreed?’

  Alize had nodded silently.

  Naturally, Max’s father had pulled a few strings. In Munich, very little stood in the way of a good Nazi, and Professor Emil Hartmann had always been one of those. As January snow deepened outside on the deserted Marienplatz, his only son and Alize stood before a desk inside the city’s immense town hall, and took their vows watched by rows of empty chairs. When they left, Hartmann carefully wrapped his full-length SS winter coat around his new wife’s shoulders. Behind them, on the building’s ice-crusted façade, the giant painted marionettes of the Rathaus glockenspiel were clanking into action.

  ‘It’s a love story,’ said Hartmann, pulling Alize close. ‘A local Bavarian duke marries his dream princess and organises a joust in honour of their love.’

  ‘Does he always win?’

  ‘Without fail. Every day for a hundred years.’

  There’d been no honeymoon, no reception, and within a few hours of the officiation, Hartmann was trudging back towards his unit in Leipzig.

  All the previous night, shunning sleep for speculation, the pair had chased futile plans into the morning. Only two things seemed certain: that the child would be born in the spring and that its father would not be there.

  ‘You can’t stay in Munich,’ Hartmann had argued. ‘It’s too dangerous now.’

  ‘My mother had a sister in Cologne. If she’s still alive, I could try there.’

  ‘Do anything. Leave the country if you have to.’

  They had not seen or heard from each other since.

  Two days later, Hartmann’s division had been sent back to the Eastern Front, a black horde of men and machines heading towards humiliation in Kharkov. On the day of his first wedding anniversary, Hartmann’s tank was immobilised in a muddy swamp, going shell for shell with four Soviet T-34’s. By the time he was recalled to Germany – miraculously intact – there’d been no news of Alize for fifteen months, and just one short note from his father which had travelled halfway around Europe before it found him. I think maybe you were right after all. We are losing this war. Don’t worry about Alize. She’s well and has travelled to have the baby at her aunt’s in Cologne. I do hope you get a chance to see it. I’m going back to Vienna until this wretched business is over. Take care. Heil Hitler.

  Hartmann looked at the date. March 1943. It had been sent over a year before. Somewhere in Germany, he had a wife and a child he knew nothing about.

  Even if he’d known where to start, Hartmann was powerless to look for them. In the company he kept, sentimentality was a weakness and secret misgivings were dangerous. Among the SS fighters of the Leibstandarte, the collective belief in glorious victory remained absurdly high. Events in Russia had been down to bad weather, nothing more. No other explanation was permitted.

  It wouldn’t benefit Hartmann to reveal that his waking thoughts languished on the image of a baby boy – or girl – learning to walk in a city shattered by nitro-glycerine. And in any case, leave of any kind – compassionate or not – had ceased to be an option. Throughout April, the shattered remnants of the 1st SS Panzer Division had been recuperating in Belgium, swollen each day by hundreds of juvenile recruits, whose training often fell to Hartmann and whose callow patriotism filled him with ungovernable sadness.

  ‘How old do you think I am?’ he’d asked one pencil-thin volunteer on his first day

  ‘Thirty-ish,’ the boy had replied. ‘Maybe more.’

  ‘And why do you think we will win the war?’

  ‘Because we are Germans. Because we are right.’

  When the spring ripened, however, the warm breath of early summer lifted him, and the army began to move. Down every road, groaning columns of tanks and trucks crawled towards the French coast. It felt good to be warm and busy. It felt good to sleep in the open under the ancient constellations. As they progressed, the men travelled through a landscape which seemed indifferent to their presence. In the flat dark fields, people were still working, their backs bent to the stubborn lines of seedlings which rose towards skies untroubled by clouds.

  By the middle of May, a huge contingent of SS and Wehrmacht divisions had assembled in the hedge-bound countryside south of Calais. Around the clock, the ground quaked with the movement of artillery, and in the dazzling daylight skies the air buzzed with friendly fighters.

  Behind their wall of concrete, no one expected an invasion. After dark, the troops traded cigarettes for cheese with the local farmers, before marinating themselves in smoky village bars. During the long, dusty days, they read battered paperbacks and gorged on stolen wine.

  Every morning, to stave off the boredom, Hartmann and his four-man tank crew took their Tiger out on manoeuvres, swerving through hedgerows and dodging phantom enemy action. Inside their armoured shell, each of them already felt indestructible, but he drove them tirelessly until each could read the others’ minds, and until he was absolutely certain that no one could possibly do it better.

  And then he had seen Koenig.

  Out of nowhere, in a dusky town square – Hartmann couldn’t remember its name – he’d heard his friend’s rollicking laughter. A minute later Koenig was stepping out from a crowd, utterly undiminished, crushing his hand and swallowing him whole in a stubbly embrace.

  ‘You made it then, Max. And you didn’t take a desk job either.’

  Twisting free of Koenig’s arms, Hartmann stepped back and examined his boyhood companion. He looked tanned and fit. Over by a packed bar he could hear a group of
men singing hymns. A mighty fortress is our God. ‘I’d have missed the creature comforts.’ He grinned.

  ‘You know your problem, Max? You’re too fucking serious.’

  ‘You know yours? You talk crap.’

  ‘Ha. It’s good to see you. It really is.’ Koenig looked up at the clock on the church tower. ‘Tomorrow maybe? A day out?’

  ‘I could get my hands on a car.’

  ‘Sounds promising. It’s my birthday, too. I’ll be expecting something lavish.’

  ‘Open-topped and a straight run to the seaside?’

  Koenig wrapped his arms round Hartmann again, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I met the Führer, Max. He spoke to me.’

  09:34 hours

  Funny that, thought Hartmann.

  If he was right, the sun was blazing down on his own birthday this time, with no gifts in prospect, and no waltzing on any clifftops. All around him, sheets of netted camouflage were being rolled back from assault guns and tanks. The last drops of fuel were being shaken from battered jerry cans. Meat rations were being traded for bullets. Hay was being stuffed into lorry tyres so riddled with holes they could no longer hold air.

  With every passing minute, as the sky brightened, the scene grew more pitiful. Blackened faces tight with worry; shredded uniforms; and, buried within the ragged chaos, the unknowable split between those who secretly wanted only to survive, and those who dreaded the unpardonable shame of imprisonment.

  Few people were expecting victory, whatever they said.

  Only two weeks after his day at the seaside with Koenig, the Allies had surged across the same Normandy sands they’d wrestled on. By the time the 1st SS Panzer Division – and Koenig’s 12th – had entered the battle zone, it was too late.

  During the daylight hours, British planes vaporised them at will. During the night, shocked survivors regrouped and prayed for coherent orders that never came.