The Kaiser’s Last Kiss. Alan Judd

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СКАЧАТЬ the gatehouse Untersturmführer Martin Krebbs ensured that his platoon was satisfactorily disposed before opening his ration pack for lunch. One section was escorting the Dutch guard back to their barracks, one had taken over the guard duties and the others were eating their rations after sorting out bunks and bedding and cleaning the lodge. The Dutch soldiers had not left it in a bad condition – as the filthy French would have, judging by what he had seen of their quarters during the push through France – but it was not up to Wehrmacht, let alone Schutzstaffel, standards.

      He looked again at Huis Doorn. His orders were not to interfere with the old Kaiser but to heed his summons, if any came, and to report back anything that was said. SS Standartenführer Kaltzbrunner, his SS colonel, would interview the Kaiser himself in due course and report to Berlin on his attitudes. Berlin would then decide what to do with the old man. Krebbs’s job, meanwhile, was to ensure that the Kaiser did not stray or fall into enemy hands, and to see that no unauthorised personnel were permitted contact with him. Unfortunately, no one had yet provided him with categories of authorisation and he was not even sure whether Major van Houten would now count as an authorised person. It was with some misgivings, therefore, that he had permitted the Dutchman to accept the farewell lunch invitation. He could not check with Standartenführer Kaltzbrunner because the telephone lines were still down and, though he should have been issued with a radio, radios at platoon level in the Wehrmacht had become mysteriously scarce during recent weeks. He made a note in his black pocket book to raise the question again at the next briefing.

      Although no palace, Huis Doorn was far larger than any private house that Krebbs had been in. It had four storeys, large windows, a good slate roof, a substantial front door and regular gables. He liked its symmetry – he always liked symmetry – and thought it the sort of house that he would have if he were rich. The Kaiser, it was well known, was exceedingly rich. Despite all the impoverishment of the German people following the Supreme Warlord’s misconduct of the last war, he had kept his fortune, living abroad in evident comfort. Meanwhile, honest men who had fought and suffered, such as Krebbs’s father, had struggled to bring up a family on the pittance a carpenter earned in Germany in the 1920s, hampered all the time by his gas-damaged lungs. He had died three years before of TB, a death made yet more horrible than it might have been by those weakened lungs. It had been left to Krebbs to support his younger sister and their mother. Well, fortunately, he had been up to the challenge and now they could feel proud to have a son in Schutzstaffel. And he had reason for pride in himself: already he had seen more action than many senior officers. First, he had taken part in the subjugation of Poland with Germany’s Russian allies who, though they might not be trustworthy in other ways, were at least sound where the Poles were concerned; secondly, he had then had the good fortune to take part in the invasion of France and had seen real fighting during the advance to Dunkirk. The French and British would have good cause to remember the SS Totenkopf – Death’s Head – division. A pity many of the enemy had escaped across the sea, though gratifying numbers had not.

      Thinking of this inevitably reminded him of that other business that had happened at the same time, the massacre of the English prisoners at the farm near Le Paradis. It was not his fault, not his doing, but the memory of those sprawling bodies heaped behind the barn was sawdust in his mouth, spoiling the taste of everything he recalled from that period. Not that his other memories were the luxuriating sort he liked to pick over and chew in quiet moments, though there was nothing to be ashamed of in them, either. Most vivid was the afternoon trapped in that bitter, hot little gully with the lead company, thirsty, exhausted, sweating in their uniforms, the screams of the wounded mingling with the shouted commands, the thumps and shocks of mortars and shells, the hateful whine of shrapnel, the spiteful whipcracks of bullets, the stink of cordite and shit. This was all too vivid if he let himself dwell on it, as was his own confusion and fear when he realised they were trapped. There was the first numbing shock of not knowing what to do next, no orders, no procedure to follow, no way forward, no way back. Then there was the sight of troopers from another company fleeing in panic, and the sickening certainty that something had gone suddenly, horribly, irreversibly wrong. Everything in life had made sense until that dry, unexpected afternoon; things had followed on one to another, everything seemed to be leading somewhere until now, incredibly, it was as if it were all about to end in that ridiculous little gully. It was unreasonable, absurd. It could not, surely, end in this squalid, insignificant bit of turf, fit only for sheep to die in, not for him. Yet while it seemed it might, he had been reduced to a waking trance, aware of everything but incapable of anything. Along with his soldiers, he had simply lain there, numbed and paralysed, until the breakout, made by troops to their right, when all had been well again. Except, afterwards, for those English prisoners.

      Krebbs was lifted from these memories by the sight of a young woman – a maidservant to judge by her dress and apron – who had come round from the back of the house and was walking down the drive towards them. His soldiers had noticed her and were already making remarks. For him there had been neither time nor opportunity for girls since Renate in Munich. The Polish girls were pretty – those Slavic cheekbones – but full of hate and fear. In France he had seen hardly any, his unit having fought its way through woods and fields while others had the less arduous task of relieving towns and villages that were quickly surrendered, like Paris itself. He had heard, though, that the French girls were more available than the Polish. As for these Dutch, it was early days – he had yet to get near enough one to speak – but there had been that encouraging vision in the orchard, a tall blonde beauty carrying a basket who had stood her ground and stared as the soldiers in the back of the lorry whistled and waved.

      He glanced at himself in the full-length mirror he had had fitted to the wall around the corner from the guardroom door so that the guards could check that they were always properly turned-out. Briefly, surreptitiously, he approved his own reflection: his field grey uniform was smart despite campaigning, his boots respectable, his chiselled features clear and fit-looking. Since the invasion of Poland the Führer himself had adopted the grey tunic of the Waffen SS, which was essentially the Wehrmacht uniform but with the eagle and swastika prominent on its left sleeve. The collar of Krebbs’s tunic, however, bore not only his rank insignia but his Totenkopf divisional symbol, the silently eloquent Death’s Head. He could never see it, on himself or anyone else, without a tremor of pride. Death to the enemy, unsparing unto death of oneself; this was what it meant to be in the Waffen SS, the Führer’s Praetorian guard, the shock troops of first and last resort. With luck, there would be time for a run later that afternoon. It was paradoxical that war, for which you trained so hard, should make it difficult to maintain an acceptable fitness routine.

      The girl, meanwhile – no tall blonde beauty – nevertheless looked trim and shapely enough as she approached. He would talk to her himself, even though she were only a servant. She might have useful intelligence on the Kaiser’s attitudes and on how things were in the household which he could report back to Colonel Kaltzbrunner. Also, she might know when the Dutch major could be expected to return from lunch. He remained anxious about that.

      He walked unhurriedly up the gravel path towards the maid, his hands clasped behind his back, staring as a policeman might stare at a citizen he was about to challenge. At first she looked straight back at him but as they closed she lowered her eyes. He approved the clean smartness of her apron and dress, the smoothness of her dark hair, parted in the middle of her submissively bowed head and neatly gathered into a tight bun. He imagined her letting it slowly down while seated at a candle-lit dressing table.

      She dispersed his fantasy by looking up, her grey eyes betraying neither nervousness nor any hint of flirtation. Her eyebrows were dark and even, her lips and teeth regular, her skin smooth and slightly tanned. She was older than him, he guessed; late twenties, perhaps even thirty. He had to resist the impulse to click heels and bow, as one did to ladies, since she was only a servant and his soldiers would mock him among themselves.

      ‘Herr Offizier,’ she said, before he could address her. ‘His Royal Highness and Princess Hermine hope you will be free to join them for dinner this evening.’

      His Royal СКАЧАТЬ