Last Man to Die

‘I didn’t mean to be hard. Your Churchill’s a great guy, really. Just wrong on this one, I guess. I’m sorry.’ He looked coy as he tried to make amends. ‘You know I like the British.’

‘What, all of us?’

‘Some more than others, I guess.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

The general looked intently across the table at Kay Summersby, the woman seconded to Eisenhower’s headquarters early in the war as his driver, then secretary, now also his lover.

‘Would you obey a direct order to come to bed, or shall I have you taken out at dawn and shot for disobedience?’

She threw her napkin playfully across the table at him, and thought how boyish he could still look with his blue eyes and explosive smile, even with his hair in rapid retreat.

‘Well, if it would help further the cause of Anglo-American understanding …’

It was in their eyes that Hencke could see the change. Once they had been battle-hardened, men of steel, soldiers of the Wehrmacht who even in captivity would gather together for the strength and support they could give each other. They had crowded around the numerous kindling fires in noisy groups, finding tasks to fill their days and maintain their spirits, beating tin cans into exotic cigarette cases, moulding and whittling jewellery from scraps of clear plastic salvaged from the cockpits of crashed planes, while those with less dexterity played chess, exchanged stories or simply shared photographs and experiences. Even in defeat there had been defiance.

Now it was all gone. There was little conversation, only silent figures whiling away the hours huddled over the low flames, some using tin cans to cook the scraps of extra rations they had bribed out of the guards or wheedled from fellow prisoners through a crooked game of Skat, no longer sharing, gaunt faces blackened from squatting so close over the fires, heads bowed, eyes red rimmed and desperate, peering out of sooty masks like clowns at a circus of the damned. As Hencke walked around the camp they cast furtive glances to see who passed by before returning once more to stare into the flames, unable or unwilling to hold his gaze. Pilsudski had known what he was about, the bastard.

It wasn’t just the finger. God, if that had been all it would have been over and done with in a moment Less pain than a boot camp hypodermic, one good heave and a cold shower and it would have been nothing more than unpleasant history. No, it was the feeling of utter worthlessness with which they were left. Pilsudski had reduced them to objects without value, with no rights, no feelings, no dignity, scarcely men at all. They had stood in the rain, raging inside at the injustice and their impotence, sick with apprehension as the line of men shortened and their turn came ever closer. They were fighting men, yet in a minute Pilsudski’s guards with their harsh, slime-smeared gloves were going to reduce them to the level of castrated pigs, not physically, but inside, where the scars never heal. When it was over they had slunk around in their private worlds of shame, feeling dirty, guilty, no longer comrades but individuals, isolated and alone. And Hencke would need every one of them if he were to have any hope of success.

A lifetime ago he had been a teacher in a bustling provincial town where the children laughed, the coffee shops were washed with conversation and the trams ran on time. He had found happiness, for a while, helping his wards enjoy a childhood he had never known. His mother had died in childbirth, his father had failed to return from the gas-filled trenches of the First War and he had been entrusted to the care of a maiden aunt who had carried her enforced maternal duties and self-sacrifice like a donkey does a chafing saddle, intolerant and protesting, a burden which she used to impress her neighbours even while she oppressed the boy. She had offered love, of a sort – selfish, demanding, inflexible, but what the middle-aged spinster recognized as love, her entire knowledge of which had been gained one clumsy afternoon as a teenager in a hayrick. She had grown to maturity with the view that men were capable only of deception, that even her brother’s death at the front was an act of personal desertion and yet, to do her justice, she was determined that her young ward would prove the exception. All her attention was lavished on the boy whom she would raise in her own image, the one man in her life who would never descend into lust and betray her. It hadn’t worked, of course. She had kept him isolated and away from the corrupting influence of friends, forbidden even to touch the memory of his lost father, so that he grew up at first in awe and eventually in hate of her until the self-righteous demands and accusations of ingratitude she cast at him had broken their bonds completely and he had been left on his own. He had built himself a new life, living his lost childhood through his young pupils, recapturing the dreams that had been stolen from him and devoting himself to the tasks of teaching with an enthusiasm combined with a degree of sensitivity and understanding that surprised those who knew nothing of his background. And few did, for outside school Hencke was intensely private, a man who insisted on the right to build his own world into which others were not invited until they had earned his trust, and he had convinced himself they would not infect the wounds left unhealed by his aunt. At last, in the small Sudeten town of Asch with its laughing children and coffee shops and trams, he thought he had found happiness. Then the war forced its way across his doorstep and the world he had so painstakingly built for himself had been blasted away, leaving nothing but fragments. After that there had been nowhere left to hide. Pilsudski had tried to strip away his sense of personal security and hope, but he was too late. Others had got there first.

Yet he needed Pilsudski, with all his grotesque savagery. Hencke had stood in line, waiting his turn, feeling the harsh wind lash his back and the tightening of apprehension in his body as he drew closer to the table and its guards, but he had experienced neither fear nor outrage. Instead there was a sense of relief, of opportunity. The degradation itself left him empty, cold; he knew there were worse fates in war. Yet he also knew that stripping away their manhood had made the others malleable; it was precisely the effect Pilsudski wanted, but Hencke understood that he might turn it to his own advantage. Within each of the crouched and humbled figures around the prison camp burned a sense of outrage which, if harnessed, might turn them once more into a force of terrible retribution – his retribution. Hencke needed these men. There was little enough chance with them, none at all without them.

As he looked across the flickering glow of a dozen tiny campfires and the hunched shoulders of those he wanted for his own personal cause, Hencke understood that the inevitable price of failure in war, even a war so near its end, would be death. But he knew he would have to risk it, risk everything, if his mission were to succeed. Even if it meant his being the last man to die …

TWO (#ulink_7f59cd1a-05cb-5008-8bbe-248be6ff61b6)

Cazolet squeezed on to the narrow seat and tried to make himself comfortable, knowing he had little chance of success. When the House of Commons had been hit by a stray Luftwaffe bomb in 1941 the team of firefighters, already sadly depleted by the firestorms blazing around London, had faced the choice of saving either the Commons or the more ancient and gracious construction of neighbouring Westminster Hall. The comfort and convenience of politicians was balanced in the scales by the firemen against the preservation of an important part of the nation’s Tudor heritage; the Commons had been left to burn until gutted.

For a while this had caused considerable disruption until the members of the House of Lords came to the rescue and gave over to their common-born colleagues the facilities of the undamaged Upper Chamber, a still more impressive Gothic edifice than the one left smouldering in ruins. Yet their hospitality had not stretched to the civil servants who accompany ministers, and so Cazolet and his kind were condemned to squashing on to a row of hard wooden stools tucked away in one corner. Not even the glories of uninhibited Victorian craftsmanship could do much to distract from the numbness that crept over Cazolet’s body less than ten minutes after perching on one of those hideous stools. Still, today he had other distractions and for once had forgotten that he could feel little from his shirt tail down.

An air of expectation filled the Chamber. Members of Parliament, many of them in the uniforms of the armed forces in which they served, bustled to find themselves a position on the red leather benches while others loitered around the extravagantly carved oak canopy covering the sovereign’s throne. Something was up. The word had gone round – the Prime Minister was coming to the House to make an important statement – everyone wanted to be in on it. Cazolet sat with a conspiratorial smile; these were the times he found his job so rewarding, when the whole world seemed to wait upon a prime ministerial utterance, the words of which Cazolet himself had drafted. And this one was going to be a cracker.

The Prime Minister walked purposefully into the Chamber, conspicuous in full morning dress with flowing coat tails, a spotted and loosely secured bow tie at his throat and his father’s gold watch fob stretched across the front of his waistcoat. The outfit was not new, indeed it gave the solid impression of having been made for him at least twenty years earlier, since it bulged and stretched in too many places. It should have been replaced long ago, but he felt comfortable in it. Anyway, Clemmie was always nagging him to be less extravagant.

No sooner had he found his place on the front bench than he was given the floor. ‘Mr Speaker, I pray the House will forgive the exuberance of my attire,’ he began, a thumb stuck firmly in his waistcoat pocket. The Old Man was teasing them, keeping them waiting, building up the atmosphere. ‘I have not, as some Honourable Members might conclude, come straight from the racecourse’ – there was a ripple of polite laughter. It wasn’t a very good joke, but if he could begin with any form of joke the news must be exceptional – ‘but from an audience with His Majesty the King. Just an hour or so ago I received news which I thought it only right to share with him and with the House at the first possible opportunity.’

‘He’s called an election,’ someone shouted from the back benches. It was a Labour MP renowned for his ready heckle, and Churchill rose willingly to the bait as more laughter washed across the House.

‘No, sir! The Honourable Gentleman must contain his impatience. He reminds me of a Black Widow spider, anxious for his date with destiny but who will undoubtedly discover that his love affair with the electorate will end only in his being brutally devoured.’

The Old Man was in good form, and there was general waving of Order Papers around the Chamber. The antagonisms of partisan politics had been laid to one side during the lifetime of the coalition government which Churchill led, but they were never far below the surface and were getting less restrained as it became apparent that an election and a return to normal parliamentary hostilities must be only weeks away.

‘Mr Speaker, sir, the whole House will know that a few days ago the Allied armies reached the western bank of the Rhine, the historical border of Germany.’ A low chorus of approval rose from the MPs, but Churchill quickly raised his hand to silence them. His tone had grown suddenly more serious. ‘No one could have been in any doubt that the crossing of the Rhine would be a deeply hazardous enterprise, with all the bridges across that vast river destroyed and the Nazi armies fighting fanatically to protect the homeland with their own towns and villages at their backs.’ He paused while he took a large linen handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers to clear his nose, and the habitual crease that ran down the centre of his forehead deepened into a frown. The Chamber was completely silent. Was it bad news after all? He had them all in his grasp – all, that is, except Cazolet, who struggled to contain his smile as he watched his master trifling with their emotions.

‘The Rhine is the last great barrier standing between our armies and complete victory. I have to tell this House that late last night a junior officer, a lieutenant, of the United States First Army, succeeded in’ – he hesitated slightly, toying with the words – ‘walking across a bridge at a small town called Remagen. It appears that the Germans, in their anxiety, failed to blow the bridge properly. Mr Speaker, the Rhine has been crossed. We have a bridgehead on German soil!’

The announcement was greeted with an outpouring of relief and jubilation on all sides, many Members rising to their feet to applaud and others shaking the hands of opponents they would normally have difficulty addressing in a civil tone. Churchill stood, triumphant in their midst, yet wishing for all the world that he were young again and could exchange his role for that of the lowly American lieutenant.

Once he had resumed his seat, other MPs rose to offer their congratulations and thoughts, giving the Prime Minister fresh opportunity to bask in the sun of military success.

‘What did you advise the King?’ asked one.

The Prime Minister’s demeanour was full of mischief. ‘The House may not know that in the dark days of 1940 I gave His Majesty a carbine, for his own personal use in the event of invasion.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I advised him that it was my firm opinion he would no longer need it.’

They loved it. Churchill’s sole regret was that he couldn’t hold the election instantly in the midst of such unqualified rejoicing. More questions, more praise. No one expected other than further fulsome accolades when Captain the Honourable Gerald Wickham-Browne, MC, DSM, caught the Speaker’s attention. The captain, junior scion of minor aristocracy, had lost an eye during the retreat from Dunkirk yet still managed to regard military combat with the sort of unrestrained enthusiasm normally found only amongst schoolchildren at a cup final. He was on his feet, standing in parade ground fashion, hands clasped behind his back and black eye-patch thrust proudly towards the distant ceiling. But he was not a happy man.

‘Is the Prime Minister aware, as delighted as I am to hear the news, that the honour of being the first to cross the Rhine was to have been left to British troops under General Montgomery? While of course we are delighted at the Americans’ good fortune in being able simply to walk across’ – Cazolet marvelled at how Wickham-Browne managed to make it sound as if a mongrel had run off with a string of prize sausages – ‘what is now to be the role of British troops, who have been preparing for months for the storming of the Rhine and who by sheer bad luck have been denied their share of this triumph? Are we to get anything by way of …’ He hesitated, unsure of the most appropriate word, before deciding it didn’t matter a damn anyway. ‘… compensation?’

Churchill rose to respond, his chin working up and down as he sought for the words of his reply, rubbing his thumbs in the palms of his hands in instinctive search for the cigar he wished he were smoking. ‘Let us not quibble over the fortunes of war. It is enough that the Rhine has been crossed. But let us not forget what this event has proved to us. First, that German resistance is crumbling. And second, that if we can pursue the battle with speed and flexibility, and can grasp the opportunities which confusion and indiscipline amongst the enemy may present, then nothing can stop our march across Germany. I have no doubt that now is the moment of our greatest opportunity, and that British forces will be in the vanguard of the victory which is surely to come. I have already telegraphed my sincerest congratulations to General Eisenhower and told him that our troops stand ready for the next challenge. Onward Britannia! Nothing can stop us now!’

At times of great crisis, words can be more powerful than bullets. Churchill had proved that time and again during the days of the Blitz when he had precious few bullets and little else with which to resist the enemy and to maintain British morale. He was conscious of the effect his words could have, yet, as he resumed his seat to the congratulations of his parliamentary colleagues, he had not the slightest notion of the impact they were causing several hundred miles away, at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, where his congratulatory telegram was bursting into fire like a grenade thrown through the window.

‘What in God’s name is this crap?’ The message trembled in Eisenhower’s hand.

British troops are ready … Now is the moment to swarm across the bridgehead at Remagen …

The flush of anger was spreading across his face as he read every new sentence. The adjutant who had delivered the telegram took another precautionary step backwards; the general was reputed to have an unreliable temper, and he didn’t care to be around to suffer the uncertain consequences.

German resistance and morale may collapse if you strike before the enemy has time to regroup …

Eisenhower continued to quote from Churchill’s missive. ‘Shit, doesn’t he realize we’ve got less than two hundred men perched on that bridgehead and they could get blown away any time? If we put so much as another pack of paperclips across that stinking bridge it’ll topple into the river. What’ll happen then? Our guys on the bridgehead become sandwich meat, that’s what!’

Suddenly he pounded his head as if to inflict punishment on himself. ‘What a fool I am … Losing my wits. Why didn’t I realize straight away what that scheming old bastard was up to?’ He read on.

The arguments for a direct drive on the German capital become irresistible. Let us drive down the autobahns which Hitler himself has built and not dare to stop until we have reached Berlin.

‘Berlin! So that’s still his game.’

He turned in his chair and screamed through the open door into the next office to his chief of staff. ‘Beetle! Get in here and bring a stenographer. I want to send a reply.’

Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith and the stenographer scuttled in without a word and perched in front of Eisenhower. There they sat, pencils poised, for several long moments while Eisenhower remained lost in thought. Ice seemed to have taken the place of the fires within him. Eventually Bedell Smith could stand the uncertainty no longer.

‘Changed your mind?’

Eisenhower raised his head from his thoughts and looked at him with piercing blue eyes.

‘Beetle, how do I say “Fuck You” in British?’

The commander tapped his stick against the chair to demand silence. In the darkness of the night the entire prisoner complement of Transit Camp 174B huddled together on the exercise square in search of companionship and warmth, forming a human amphitheatre around the flames of an open fire. Their faces stared gaunt and drained of colour in the flickering light like ghosts gathered around a grave. They expected no comfort from the commander’s words. An Ehrenrat had been called, a ‘Council of Elders’, and that only happened when there was a real mess.

The commander sat at their head, with his two senior officers on either side and several others standing behind. He was leaning on his stick even while seated, his face a lurid mask as some player in a tragedy.

‘My friends,’ the commander began. A few of them noticed that he had forsaken his customary formal greeting – ‘Men of the Wehrmacht!’; there was no suggestion of command in his voice. ‘My friends, I have gathered you all together to share with you the news I was given today. I can find no words to lessen the pain, and so I …’ He lowered his head, struggling for composure and fresh strength. He cleared his throat, as if the words were sticking in his gullet like phlegm.

‘The Russians are fighting on German soil. They are already well advanced into Pomerania, and have crossed the Oder. They are less than a hundred miles from the Hauptstadt, Berlin.’