The Soul Of A Thief

II (#u9589d37d-17ff-5b6f-8db0-b1ef861009e6)

IN APRIL OF 1943, I first faced my death on the second week of my employment.

Lest you think me of a timid nature and overly dramatic, I shall relay to you the first of many such events which sowed the seeds of a conviction that my survival might be in question.

I had just commenced my tasks for Colonel Erich Himmel of the Waffen SS, and at first it appeared that serving as the Colonel’s adjutant was certainly an insurance policy among the many uninsured. Himmel’s Commando was presently hosted in one of the many glorious castles astride the eastern banks of the Rhine, not far from Rüdesheim, a tiny village nestled in a bend of the swollen waters of the river. Early spring had blessed the rolling hills with greenery and flowers, cool morning fogs caressed the church spires, and as we were far from any of the industrial cities, the Allied bombings were no more threatening than, or discernible from, the occasional spates of evening thunderstorms. Surely, no matter the dangerous adventures to be undertaken by the unit, I would remain here in this virtual paradise of tranquility, while the SS did its duty elsewhere.

Inasmuch as I was not a combat soldier, and had never been trained as one, at first I served the commander in the only threadbare suit I owned. It was a loose and comfortable gray tweed, hanging a bit on my scrawny frame, but perhaps it comforted me somewhat, offering the illusion of being nothing more than a civilian secretary. I began by simply serving the commander his coffee and cakes, meals of goat cheese and rough breads, tending to the condition of his uniforms and boots, and making sure that his supply of eye patches was in order. He had lost his left eye early in the war, a wound that he dismissed as a blessing, for it obviated the requirement to squint when he fired his pistol.

At first, the commander barely seemed to notice me, and he hardly spoke to me except to issue terse but polite instructions.

“Shtefan, bring me this. Shtefan, bring me that.”

I responded quickly and efficiently, although it was difficult to click my heels along with my stiff bow at the waist, for I still shuffled along in a pair of church dress shoes, worn down to the soles and beyond.

The commander’s captain and lieutenants rarely gazed in my direction, as if I were a ghost. But soon, a young, dark-eyed lieutenant named Gans approached me in Himmel’s presence, carrying a carelessly folded uniform in his arms.

“You can have it,” the commander stated, not looking up from a sheaf of orders on his desk. “It belonged to Fritz Heidt, but he is dead.”

“That is...most generous,” I stuttered, while cringing at the idea. “But my suit is just fine, Herr Colonel.”

Himmel glanced up from his paperwork, and seeing that narrow squint, I hurried off to don the filthy thing. The trousers fit adequately, aided by the thick braces over my bony shoulders, but in the tunic there was a neat bullet hole just above the heart. I swallowed hard as I buttoned it, then reasoned that the odds of yet another bullet striking the garment in exactly the same place were in my favor. The high boots that were issued me were small and damp, but manageable. As yet, I had no army stockings, and my left heel kept sticking to the leather. It was not until that evening that I realized there was still blood in the boot.

I did not then surmise, until the castle began to bustle, that the issue of my fresh costume was the portent of an upcoming mission.

Until that eve, the men had been relaxed, at least when protected from Himmel’s view. At night they stood the watch or slept within the castle walls, but during daylight they pursued the business of elite combat troops in respite: meticulously cleaning their weapons, shining buckles and boots, replenishing ammunition, and occasionally roughhousing with each other like a pack of wild pups. As their uniforms had all sustained various degrees of damage, they would summon the local Hungarian refugee girls and, assuming that every female possesses the inherent traits of a seamstress, oblige them to cut and sew and repair loose buttons.

If a girl was particularly comely, a younger member of the troop would be posted to alarm if an officer approached, while a trio or so of his comrades raped her in the wine cellar. These assaults were horrific in nature, yet strangely devoid of violence, and once I witnessed a rumpled teen leaving the quarters with tears tracking her face, yet grinning a quivering smile. She carried a pile of breads and cheeses in her arms, along with two bottles of port, the apparent rewards for submission without a scream. The next time I saw her, she appeared in the courtyard and made straight for the cellar, unbuttoning her blouse as she clipped along, eyes cast downward, a happy quintet of SS on her heels. These incidents assailed my sense of honor, gentility and romance, yet I dared not object. It would be some months before I understood that war and the proximity of death could make beasts of even princes.

Occasionally, the troops would test their weapons immediately after repair. I admit that it took quite some time for me to acclimate myself to this practice. The violent activity would be barely prefaced with a warning shout of “Ich schiesse!” and then the racket of a machine pistol would echo much too close. On the first time this occurred, I hurled myself to the ground, sending the Colonel’s tea tray spinning as I flopped into a miasma of mud. The group of commandos who witnessed my squirming shock regaled themselves with laughter for many minutes, and I, red-faced and smirking like a fool, was instantly baptized with the nickname “Fish.”

In any event, it was late in the eve after acquiring my uniform when Himmel suddenly stomped into the small maid’s chamber in which I’d fashioned my quarters. I lay upon a straw mattress, wearing my trousers, braces, a rough undershirt, and reading a Hans Christian Andersen Märchenbuch by the light of a candle.

“Up, Shtefan! Up! Up! Up!”

The Colonel had an unusual spring to his step and a strangely euphoric glint in his eye, traits I would come to recognize and fear as the harbingers of action with the enemy.

He disappeared and I dressed quickly, still buttoning my tunic and working my tender feet into my boots as I hurried to his makeshift office, the grand salon of the castle. A fire was crackling in the hearth, and a wooden door had been laid upon a pair of sawhorses, making for a plotting table. A large map had been laid out, with hand grenades serving as paperweights to stay the corners. Officers surrounded the table, including Captain Friedrich, a nearly white blond and frightening creature of extreme height, and three lieutenants. The company armorer, a husky, gap-toothed sergeant named Heinz, was in attendance as well. I would also come to learn that his presence at any briefing boded ill for the faint of heart.

“That is all,” Himmel was saying. “Have the men ready in ten minutes.”

The officers responded with heel clicks and those robotic bows, and they rushed off to their assignments. Himmel quickly turned to a wooden footlocker at the base of his desk and, without looking to confirm that I was actually present, spoke to me.

“Fold up the map,” he ordered.

I carefully removed the potato-masher grenades, lifting them with the timidity of a novice butcher extracting his first entrails, and I folded the map along its creases. I noted that it was a detailed terrain of a section of the northern Italian border, which was far away to the south.

“Put it in my rear pouch.”

He meant the leather satchel that was affixed to his combat webbing, that heavy harness that contained his pistol ammunition, grenades, a water bottle and his SS commando blade, engraved with a swastika and the words Meine Ehre Heibt Treue—My Honor’s Name Is Loyalty.

“Come here.”

I turned to him then. He was standing next to the footlocker with a strangely mischievous grin on his face, as if he was attempting to suppress a private joke. In his hands was a leather pistol belt. I walked to him.

“Hold out your arms.”

I extended them, expecting him to lay the belt across my wrists.

“Not like that, you little idiot! Out to the sides.”

I blushed, and then the embarrassment quickly turned to another sort of flush as I began to understand. Somewhat like a proud father fitting his son with his first pair of soccer shorts, he flicked the belt around my waist and fastened it. In the next moment, he had a heavy pistol in his hand.

“The Walther P-38,” he stated crisply. “Usually reserved for officers, but you will only knock yourself silly with a rifle.” He held the pistol up for me to view it laterally, and I can only imagine how my eyes must have bugged terribly wide. “You pull back the slide here,” he instructed, “release it and a bullet enters the chamber.” The spring-loaded steel made me wince as it struck home. “This is the safety catch,” he said, then wagged a callused finger at me. “Never put it on. You will only forget and wonder why you cannot fire.”

I am sure that I gulped at that point, screaming inside my head, Why? Why do I need to know this?!

Himmel continued. “The magazine goes in here.” He rammed it home, then came up with another long rectangle of steel. “Here is an extra one. Put it in your pocket, not in a pouch. You are not a soldier yet, and you will forget where it is.”

Yet? I wanted to shout. Yet? I’m not a soldier now, nor do I ever wish to be!

At this juncture, I began to perspire profusely. It was clear that the troop was about to embark on some disastrous adventure of which I wanted no part. I searched madly for a way out, the one turn of phrase that might free me from this avalanche.

“Herr Colonel,” I stuttered. “I doubt that... I mean, Sir... I think that I might be more a danger to your venture than an asset...”

“Nonsense!” Himmel boomed, and it was then that I understood his view of the world, the war, and the rites of passage. He was offering me an honor which could not be declined. “I do not expect you to contribute anything worthwhile, Shtefan, but I do expect you to keep yourself intact. And this as well...”

He reached into the footlocker and brought out a small leather case, slapping it into my palm.

“It is a Leica and two extra rolls of film. Take photos, and stay close behind me.”

I must have been regarding him with the same expression of a child who first witnesses his parents’ fornication. He actually grinned at me.

“British commandos have captured a staff officer of the 1st Panzer. We are going to free him. Just before dawn. Get yourself a helmet.”

With that, he strode from the room, shouting orders to Captain Friedrich. With a trembling hand, I managed to slide the pistol into my holster and snap it shut, and as instructed, I slipped the extra magazine into my trouser pocket. Then, for a moment, I considered running straight for my chamber and the servants’ entrance and not stopping until I had swum the Rhine and walked all the way to France. Unfortunately, we still occupied all that part of Europe, and what might befall me in the embrace of some other Nazi officer could make this impending fate seem attractive by comparison.

There was an open bottle of wine on the commander’s desk. I drank a quarter of it quickly, and followed after him...

* * *

The castle was nestled upon a small soft meadow, in the cleavage of a pair of high peaks, and we wound away from it in utter darkness. The company cook’s fires danced dimly from a lower window, and I never had thought to regard that cold, bleak stone edifice as a home from which to regret departure.

I sat stiffly in the rear of Colonel Himmel’s staff car. The winter months were still fresh memories, and a harsh chill made the black air brittle, yet the Kübelwagen’s folding roof was not deployed, and I had to set my jaw against my chattering teeth. Behind us, two medium troop trucks with canvas roofs followed close, and despite the rutted road and trundling engines, I could hear the raiding complement of twenty-one men chattering and laughing from within. I had no doubt that I was the object of their mirth, for they had passed me by en route to debarkation, as I stood behind the Colonel clutching the camera and his map case. I no doubt served up the image of a martial jester, wearing a coal scuttle helmet too large for even an average man. Its rim fell well below my earlobes, and the commandos, sporting leopard camouflage smocks, hauling their machine pistols and light machine guns and even an anti-armor Panzerfaust, had unabashedly jerked their thumbs at me and howled as they boarded their trucks.

Himmel’s driver, an older, mustached corporal named Edward, deftly maneuvered the car along the winding mountain roads, without benefit of headlights. Beside him the Colonel sat, erect and silent, puffing a short cigar whose smoke wafted directly back into my face. Himmel was not wearing a helmet, but only a Feldmütze, the SS field cap angled smartly over his bristle of gray-blond hair, and every other member of the troop was similarly cavalier. But I was grateful for my steel hat, and certainly unconcerned with being out of fashion.

After two hours of a spine-numbing drive to the south, we rose from between the copses of mountainside trees and onto a higher road bordered by gently waving grass. A sliver of moon then peaked a distant crest, and Himmel turned his head to stare at it in disgust, as if his expression might convince the orb to retreat. Yet it only rose higher, throwing some small farmhouses and cattle fences into sharp relief. Soon, we were traversing a large flat meadow, and I realized we had climbed upon a lip overlooking the winding silver waters of the Rhine so far below. On any other night, in any other life, I would have noted the beauty of such a stunning vision. Yet something else caught my attention.