World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head

‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be back on flying duties. As an Oberleutnant with my experience, I’d probably get command of one of the new high altitude zeppelins. I even tried for the High Seas Fleet. But the damned medical board won’t clear me. Sometimes I wonder whether Father hasn’t found some way of keeping me from active duty.’

‘There’s no doubt he’d try if he got the chance,’ said Pauli. They both knew that their father would have done anything to keep Pauli from the Western Front, and for Pauli his efforts had obviously failed.

‘Now that the army have stopped using airships, Father probably has less influence with them. But the navy still listen to him.’

‘When did you last see him?’ asked Pauli. He scratched himself. Fleas were a fact of life in the trenches – and lice, too – but Pauli noticed his brother’s look of horror as he realized he was lousy.

‘Christmas. I got seven days’ leave. Everyone hoped that you’d come home too.’

‘Training. I got a twenty-four-hour pass for Christmas. No one was permitted to leave the barracks. Even the colonel stayed.’

‘The infantry are winning the war,’ said Peter.

‘We’re not winning the war,’ said Pauli. ‘We’re being shot at, and we’re shooting back. We are not winning the war. We will win it, of course – no one doubts that – but for the time being it’s a sort of stalemate. Neither side advances more than a few metres, and the English leave battalions of dead on the barbed wire.’

‘At least the Russians are kaputt,’ said Peter.

‘We don’t get much news where we are.’

‘It started in March; there were food riots in Petrograd, and when the troops were called out they shot their officers and joined the mob.’

‘My God!’

‘You didn’t hear?’

‘Only that the Tsar abdicated and a provisional government was formed. The troops joined in? It’s true?’

‘Including the Imperial Guard. Some say it started in the Imperial Guard but even in Brussels it’s difficult to get reliable news. Each newspaper story contradicts the one before. A fellow I know on the Supreme Command at Spa told me the little I know.’

‘What will happen now?’

‘The Russians can’t go on fighting much longer. In Berlin there are rumours that the Kaiser has arranged for Marxist revolutionaries to be given safe passage across Germany to return home to Russia.’

‘The Kaiser would allow such a thing? Never!’

‘The revolutionaries have always been opposed to the war – the world brotherhood of man, and so on. So if they took power in Petrograd, they would immediately order a cease-fire. If we have no enemy to fight in the East, all our divisions would be turned to face the French and the British. The war could end within the month.’

‘It sounds too good to be true.’

Peter nodded his agreement and said, ‘What will you do when it ends, Pauli? Will you stay in the army?’

‘What else am I fit for? I have no head for banking or business and even if I did have, I’m not sure that I’d get along well enough with Father to be working alongside him every day. What about you?’

‘No more piano playing.’ He held up his gloved hand. ‘I’ll go to college. If Father wants me to study law, I’ll do it. Then, if I don’t get along with him, I can go into a law practice somewhere.’

‘Tell me about dear Mama…. It’s such a long time.’

‘She still has the awful American accent, but her German is much better now. She found people would be rude to her, thinking she was British. It made her improve her German in a way that nothing else ever did.’

‘Rude to Mama? Who would be rude to her?’

‘People standing in the food lines.’

‘Mama standing in the food lines?’

‘Mother has changed, Pauli. Just as the Jews have become so determined to prove their patriotism, so Mama and other foreign-born Germans feel that they must outdo everyone else in the struggle to win the war. She helps the wounded soldiers to write letters home, she rolls bandages, and even makes speeches at War Loans rallies.’

‘But she was so sick.’

‘Then the war has cured her sickness. When you go back to Berlin, you will not recognize her, Pauli.’

‘And what of Father?’

‘Work, work, work. Did you hear that Hauser joined the army?’

‘Old Hauser? Father’s valet? But he must be at least forty years old.’

‘Thirty-eight years old. I’m surprised they took him, but he shaved off that awful beard and gave a false age to the recruiting officer. He’s now a driving instructor at a transport school in Frankfurt. And from what I hear from Father, he’s lording it with stories about how he used to drive Papa’s old Itala.’

‘How does Father manage without him?’

‘It’s amazing. Father drives himself almost everywhere.’

‘And women?’

His brother hesitated. It was a taboo subject, or had been until now. ‘He goes to Vienna a great deal,’ said Peter finally.

‘I thought that was finished.’

‘So did poor Mama, I think.’

‘I wish Father could see how ridiculous it makes him look,’ said Pauli. He loved his father and respected him to the point of reverence, but now he’d reached the age at which he judged him, too.

‘Does it make him look ridiculous? Most of his friends seem to admire and envy him. We are the only ones who think him ridiculous, and that’s just because we feel sorry for Mama.’

‘Perhaps she would have been happier with the Englishman.’

‘Which Englishman?’

‘Surely you guessed that the Englishman, Piper, wanted her to go away with him.’

‘Mama?’

‘Mama had a love affair with the Englishman. At Travemünde, when we lost the Valhalla.’

‘Are you crazy, Pauli?’

‘It took me a long time to understand what had happened between them. But now I look back at it, I can see how desperately unhappy she was for years afterwards.’