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

of the Red Star. These people are winning, he thought. As maybe they should.

Inside the building, candles flickered at the far end of the nave, casting the long shadow of a kneeling figure onto the folds of cloth draped over the table that served as an altar.

Nehmann approached, aware of tiny shards of broken glass beneath his feet, and phrases from the liturgy buried deep in his childhood began to surface for the first time in his adult life. The Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, he thought.

Nehmann paused, just metres away from the figure bent in prayer. At last, he stirred. It was the priest. He’d been at the party, a watchful presence behind the dense tangle of greying beard, happy to welcome laughter to the house of God. Nehmann had heard that he occasionally played the organ on days when he could make the bellows work properly, mainly Bach toccatas.

‘You’re here for me?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You want to pray?’

‘I want to take communion.’

‘I see.’ The priest struggled to his feet. He was in his fifties at least, much older than Nehmann had imagined. His face was clouded with a frown. He seemed to be considering Nehmann’s request. ‘That may be difficult,’ he said at last. ‘We have very little wine, and what’s left is frozen.’

Nehmann shrugged. He said he was happy to do without the wine.

‘No wine?’ The frown had deepened.

‘No wine,’ Nehmann confirmed. ‘We’ll just pretend.’

‘Pretend?’ The ghost of a smile. ‘And assume that God won’t notice?’

In the end, they prayed together. The priest made no mention of the battle, of the injured, of the dead. To Nehmann, mumbling ‘Amen’ when each prayer came to an end, the war might never have happened. They might have been in some city or other, surrounded by the blessings of peace, praying for the usual list of propositions: good health, humility, wellbeing. After a final recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, the priest made the sign of the Cross and indicated that their conversation was over.

Nehmann thanked him and turned to leave. Then the priest called him back. He looked weary, almost resigned.

‘We had visitors last night,’ he said. ‘You might like to take a look at the vestry.’

Nehmann nodded. Once again, he was heading down the nave.

‘There’s another way down,’ the priest called. ‘You needn’t go outside.’

He collected a candle from the altar and gave it to Nehmann. Then he led the way to a door half hidden behind a brick pillar and gestured at the wooden steps that led into the darkness.

‘God be with you,’ he murmured.

Nehmann thanked him. The candle was dripping hot wax onto his hand and he paused on the first step to adjust it. Then he began to make his way down, following the spill of light on the rough brickwork, step after careful step. At the bottom, his boots found a solid floor. Another door, he thought. He pushed it open, holding out the candle, wondering whether he should have gone back to the bus depot to collect Grimberger. Then his eyes found the body on the floor.

He knew at once it was Kirile. The same thin wrists. The same falling-apart boots with different coloured laces. But where his face had once been was a criss-cross of deep wounds, the features smashed, the eyeballs empty, shattered teeth between pulped gums. Nehmann’s hand began to shake. The flame wavered, spilling onto the floor beside the wreckage of Kirile’s face. The spade looked new. Frozen blood, a deep ochre, had crusted on the gleaming blade and there was more of it on the wooden shaft and on the worn floorboards around Kirile’s head.

Nehmann knelt briefly. The flesh of Kirile’s hands was icy. He brought one hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he left.

30

TATSINSKAYA AIRFIELD, 23 DECEMBER 1942

Nehmann flew out of Stalingrad on a stormy morning, two days before Christmas, trying hard not to think of Kirile’s ruined face. The Ju-52 was overweight on take-off, packed with walking wounded from the field hospital at Gumrak, and the airframe groaned as the aircraft hit a final rut before getting itself airborne. The pathologist, Dr Gigensohen, was also on board, his work among the city’s many dead complete. He and Nehmann were at the rear of the plane, squashed against a bulkhead.

The weather, thankfully, made any interceptions from Soviet fighters unlikely. One of the Junkers’ engines quickly developed a fault and the pilot was unable to nurse the aircraft into clean air above the turbulence. As a result the Tante-Ju was at the mercy of the storm, tossed around by the violence of the gusting wind. Many of the men, already white-faced from the pain of their injuries, began to be sick and by the time the pilot managed to slam the aircraft onto the airfield at Tatsinskaya, the metal floor of the fuselage was pooled with blood and vomit. For once, Nehmann was glad when ground crew wrestled the door open and let in the icy air. The heavy sweetness of the fug inside the aircraft had become unbearable. After Kirile, he thought, comes this. Life can’t possibly get worse.

Wrong. Messner was on hand with a Kübelwagen.While the pilot conferred with a technician about the engine he’d had to close down, Messner drove Nehmann and the pathologist across to the makeshift building Fliegerkorps VIII were using as a squadron mess. The Tante-Ju,he assured them, would be repaired and cleaned up for the next leg of the flight west. With luck, they’d be back in the air before dusk.

It didn’t happen. From the mess, Nehmann was able to watch engineers working feverishly to replace parts on the malfunctioning engine. After darkness fell, they became half a dozen torches, their fading beams criss-crossing in the darkness. By now, after days of raids by Soviet bombers, the airfield was threatened by a Soviet tank army pushing in from the west. According to Messner, Richthofen had begged permission to pull out and save the aircraft that were still serviceable but High Command