Sniper's Honor(115)

“You’re vastly superior to me. My death means everything, particularly to me, and I don’t care to have it occur today. When I turn you over to them, my men and I get out of your lovely country for good. We may even survive.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “By the way, I’ve never seen that funny helmet. What are you supposed to be, a mushroom?”

“It’s a parachutist’s helmet. We’re the famous Battlegroup Von Drehle, on detached duty with Fourteenth Panzergrenadier, Army Group North Ukraine, Major Karl Von Drehle at your service. You know, we jump out of airplanes. A daredevil like you would enjoy it. I’d take you along if you weren’t otherwise occupied.”

“What does ‘Kreta’ mean?” She pointed to the embroidered strip around the cuff of his bonebag. “Is it a kind of cheese?”

“That’s ‘feta.’ Kreta is a Greek island in the Mediterranean. We jumped into it in 1941. They fired at us all the way down.”

“Perhaps if you hadn’t been invading their island, they wouldn’t have been shooting.”

“I understood their point of view and the military necessity involved. I didn’t take it personally.”

“My husband, Dimitri, was a pilot. He didn’t jump out of his airplane, he burned alive in it. German incendiary bullets.”

“That was nothing personal, either, even if you and Dimitri take it personally. I have many comrades buried under wheat and snow, so I may know something of grief. Who are these men with you?”

He gestured, and both looked across the road to the two captives ravenously devouring German rations.

“These are simple men, a schoolteacher and a peasant. Subtleties are beyond them. They are ignorant.”

“I can’t let them go. The SS wants them, too.”

She said nothing. The sun lit her face, which was fair and calm. She took another puff of her cigarette, inhaled, exhaled, utterly impervious to self and circumstance.

“The SS is on its way to pick you up. Yet you remain calm. Quite impressive.”

“I never expected to survive. I’ve accepted my own death. I killed Groedl and nothing else matters. No one is left in my family, so I will join them in heaven, if there is a heaven. Look, Major, you appear to be a civilized man. May I ask you—may I beg you? Please. I accept that I am your trophy and will earn you some prizes. But let those two men go. They’re nothing but refugees. I’m your ticket to survival. They’re harmless. Ask yourself the same question. What difference does it make?”

“I really hate you noble, heroic types. See that fellow over there feeding your friends? He’s even got them laughing? That guy’s noble, too. It’s sickening. He has six wound stripes and a seventy-five-engagement badge. Seventy-five! That covers him to about 1942, but they don’t make bigger badges. For political reasons, the SS would kill him if they could. They know his subversive tendencies. I’d like to get him home; he’s earned it. My other fellows, too. They’ve earned it. And if I don’t give your friends to the SS, Wili doesn’t go home, and this little group of boys who are pretty much my family, they don’t go home. They die here on some godforsaken mountain. For nothing. So that does matter, and that is why I can’t help you, much as I might want to. If I have to weigh your friends’ lives against Wili’s, and it appears I do, then I’ll choose Wili’s every time. I tell you this so you know my motives aren’t malign, even if they have, from your point of view, malign results.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

“To be honest, it feels personal, and I don’t like the feeling. But duty is duty.”

“I appreciate that the young officer listened to me and treated me civilly.”

“I appreciate that the sniper sergeant behaved well. It’s a mark of good breeding.”



* * *



An hour passed. The three prisoners ate a last meal. The other men remained in casual battle positions, with two recon posts half a mile down the Yaremche road to report on the arrival of either the Police Brigade panzerwagens or the Russians. Karl sat in the communications tent with Wili, monitoring developments over the radio.

He smoked and thought. He decided what the hell and finished off the last of his English pipe tobacco. It brought a rich, heavy buzz to his head. The sound of the shells, the scream of the rockets, was constant, though it varied in intensity. It rose, it fell. Still, no small-arms fire could be heard, which meant the battle was too far off to matter.

His reverie was interrupted by his signalman. “Karl, Horst on telephone.”