Last Flight to Stalingrad Graham Hurley (sight word books .TXT) 📖

Nothing.

20

TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 2 SEPTEMBER 1942

Over the next month, Tatsinskaya became a second home for Werner Nehmann. For the first week, when the Generaloberst’s hectic schedule permitted, Nehmann spent more time with Richthofen, exploring his past, inviting his views about the Reich’s strengths and weaknesses as campaign after campaign unfolded, trying to get a feel for the man. To his surprise, Hitler’s favourite airman was remarkably candid. He had no patience for arse-licking of any description. He viewed the upper reaches of the Berlin military as completely out of touch. Time and again, he insisted that only commanders in the field, especially here in the east, could truly be relied on for the truth.

Nehmann wove the best quotes from these interviews into a longish despatch for Goebbels, knowing only too well that he’d reshape them for his own purposes. The Minister had debts to settle with the likes of Goering and Ribbentrop and in both cases Nehmann was more than happy to supply bullets for his gun. Within days, Nehmann received a brisk note – handwritten – from the Promi. ‘Excellent material. Mehr, bitte.’

More, please. Nehmann needed no encouragement. Over the next couple of weeks, interview by interview, he moved among the airmen and the ground crews, the maintenance teams and the resupply echelons, and began to assemble a series of supplementary reports.

His subject now, all too easy, was the most obvious. Who was this enemy? What were the Russians like?

Luftwaffe personnel he sat down with were only too happy to oblige with an answer or two. Many of them hadn’t been home for more than a year. They’d mingled with tank crews and infantry as the Reich’s armies pressed ever deeper into Russia and picked up a mass of anecdotal stories.

The Ivans are Asiatic sub-human garbage, said one. Thieves, said another. They put on thin German trousers in the winter because they’re warm under their own kit, and you’ll never meet an Ivan who isn’t wearing at least two German watches. They pillage our dead and leave shit and piss everywhere. Look for yellow snow and somewhere nearby you’ll find an Ivan.

Ivans, according to a medical orderly, spend most of their time drunk. They call vodka Product 61 because that’s the way it’s numbered on the commissary issue lists. A brimming mugful of Product 61 is what they drink when they get a medal. The medal’s in the bottom of the mug, you open your throat, swallow the lot, and emerge with the medal clamped in your teeth.

Another medic, a nurse this time, was even more graphic. When the vodka’s all gone, and they’re desperate for anything, she told Nehmann that the Ivans drink anti-yperite liquid from their anti-chemical warfare kit which drives most of them clinically insane. The lucky ones sober up on water drained from central heating systems or scooped up from puddles. These people live like animals, she said. They deserve to be put down.

This was excellent copy but on a more personal level, Nehmann was uneasy about ‘put down’. Helmut had already confirmed that the shots he’d taken of the SS truck had disappeared but when Nehmann pushed him further – who? why? – he said he didn’t know. The photos, he insisted, were graphic: head and shoulders shots in extreme close-up, useless for individual ID, but ample proof that the SS were sadistic as well as merciless. Why they’d bother to bring the smashed-up bodies to Tatsinskaya was beyond him but this act of trespass by some stranger breaking into his darkroom had disturbed him, and he couldn’t hide a fear of possible consequences. The SS had powers you wouldn’t believe, he told Nehmann. If I disappear one day, you’ll know where to look.

Messner, Nehmann decided, might know the answer. By that first week of September, the two men were getting to know each other. Messner never bothered to hide his attitude towards journalists in general, partly mistrust, partly a kind of dismissive contempt, but he seemed to regard Nehmann as an exception. In his busy working days, he’d always find the time to brief Goebbels’ pet Waise on progress inside the besieged city: how the Stukas were flying from sunrise to sunset, managing as many as eight sorties while the daylight lasted. How the Heinkels were pounding key industrial targets: the Lazur chemical factory, the Red October metallurgical works, the Barrikadygun factory, and the sprawling complex that was the Dzerzhinski tractor assembly plant.

Nehmann dutifully noted this tally of ruins but more interesting was the physical evidence around him. The airfield, it seemed to him, was getting less busy rather than more. Ground crews were still swarming over every returning aircraft, trying to beat the turnaround times and get them back in the air, but of the aircraft themselves there seemed to be fewer and fewer. When he put this thought to Messner, the Oberstleutnant shrugged. It was early evening, and Nehmann had joined Messner for a smoke.

‘We certainly have problems,’ he muttered. ‘It’s true. Maybe you should talk to the Generaloberst.’

‘Maybe I should. Can you fix it?’

‘I can try.’

‘I need to get up to the front line, too. Possible, you think?’

‘Anything’s possible. You’re getting bored here? We don’t frighten you enough?’

The two men were sprawled in the grass, enjoying the early evening sunshine. Over the last day or two, Nehmann had been aware that Messner had begun to lower his guard. At first, every exchange with Nehmann had ventured no further than a formal recitation of facts, statistics, the dry leavings of Fliegerkorps VIII’s working day. How many sorties completed. The precise weight of bombs dropped. Target damage assessments recounted with a slightly grim attention to detail. Now, though, Messner seemed in the mood for something more intimate.

‘That little girl of yours, the one I met at Wannsee.’ Nehmann was lying on his back, his eyes closed. ‘Do you miss her at all?’

‘Lottie?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s my daughter, Nehmann. A father has responsibilities.’

‘That wasn’t my question.