The Soul Of A Thief

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.

Sitting at the very top of the meadow were three large forms, silhouettes the likes of which I had never seen. They appeared to be enormous iron wasps, with faces of curving glass, ugly fat tires for feet, and above, double umbrellas of long glinting sword blades. I leaned forward in my seat, my mouth certainly agape, and Himmel turned his face to me and grinned.

“Hubschrauber,” he yelled above the car’s engine roar. “Helicopters. Have you never seen one?”

I believe that I slowly shook my head in disbelief. I had, of course, heard that someday there would be such an airplane, one that could lift straight up into the sky without benefit of wings. But as yet, I was certain that such things existed only in the ancient notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.

“Skorzeny prefers a Storch,” Himmel continued. He meant the light aircraft favored by the infamous commando leader, Colonel Otto Skorzeny. “Scarface Skorzeny,” as he was often called, was a personal favorite of Hitler and clearly a competitor for Himmel’s glories. “But I managed to elicit these from the Luftwaffe. They’re Dragons, experimental.”

I did not know why Himmel seemed to be informing, or rather, confiding in me. Perhaps he expected me to someday write his memoirs? I had not long to consider this, as the staff car raced toward the first of the iron monsters. There are historians who swear that no such functional machines existed until years later, but I bear witness to the contrary. A low-pitched whine began to emanate from its massive engines, and its drooping blades began to slowly twirl. From that moment on, I was gripped by an icy fist of fear that set me to a sort of paralysis. The staff car slammed to a halt, and I sat in the back, staring and immobilized.

“Raus!” Himmel snatched at my tunic shoulder and fairly dragged me from the vehicle. I slipped and fell into the mud, and then he was pulling me along as he shouted orders to his men and to the pilots. I vaguely recall the trundle of many boots as the raiding complement ran and leaped into their respective helicopters, while Himmel pushed me to the wide open doorway of the first machine and kneed my buttocks as if I were a cow. I climbed in clumsily, already hyperventilating, gripping the Leica case as if it might save my life. Himmel stepped directly over my quivering form and squatted in the iron cavern just behind the pair of Luftwaffe pilots, and immediately the space was filled with the first seven SS of his forward element. They jockeyed for positions, falling hard on their rumps and tucking up their legs. Someone’s binoculars swung and struck my helmet with a resounding ping, and I saw Himmel twirling his finger in the air between the pilots and I felt my stomach leap for my throat as the horrible device left earth for heaven.

I do not know how long we flew, yet it certainly seemed forever. And I did not see very much, as for most of the journey my eyes were clamped shut. The engines roared like a carpenter’s lathe and a freezing wind sliced through the rattling compartment, and I remembered as a child being forced by my father to ride the great carnival wheel in Vienna’s Prater, and how I had peed in my trousers, an urge I barely contained at this moment. At one point, long into the horrible flight, someone slapped the top of my helmet, and I opened my eyes to see the grinning face of Captain Friedrich, his steel blue eyes merry and his flaxen eyebrows arched in utter thrill. He suddenly pinched my cheek with what one might suppose a gesture of comradely affection, yet it hurt so much I nearly yelled. But it was then I looked to the fuselage’s windows, and realized we were in fact skimming at breakneck speed through a deep and winding valley, and we were well below the peaks of its sides. I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut once more, and it required every muscle of my stomach not to regurgitate its contents.

We flew on into a breaking dawn; I could feel the growing light upon my eyelids. I heard someone bellow, “Stukas!” and I managed to take a peek. We were flying much higher now, and astride the helicopter was a pair of the Luftwaffe’s ugly fighter-bombers. I managed to twist my head a bit, achieving a glimpse of our other two transports bobbing in the cold blue air not far behind, and then the Stukas flipped over and dived away from us. Understanding nothing of such raiding tactics, I did not know that they were there to first bomb the perimeter of the target, with the intent to shock the British commandos and force them to take shelter. Nor did I realize that in order to maintain this tactical advantage, we would immediately assault into the still-raining debris of the bombing.

I yelled then, for the helicopter suddenly tilted nose downward, and I believed we were crashing. I flung my arms out and actually hugged myself to Himmel’s back, like a girl gripping a reckless horseman, and I cared not what the men would think of me or call me later on. Then all at once the horrible machine swooped up again, seemed to stop in midforward motion, and settled to the hard ground with a resounding thud of steel.

Still gripping the Colonel, my cringing face pressed against his battle harness, I was dragged from the compartment as he leaped out. I smashed to the ground, a rag doll of flopping arms and legs, and then someone yanked me up, and I saw that Himmel was already running away at full tilt and I chased after him. Following that madman into battle was not an hour before the very last intent I had, but now I wanted nothing more than to see his back filling my field of vision, and absolutely nothing else.

I do not really know what happened on that peak that morning. I was the poorest witness to history, for I saw little more than my master’s form, his waving arms, the spent brass shells spinning from the chamber of his pistol. I heard nothing of distinction to remember, save the gunfire that began almost immediately upon our birthing from the helicopters, muffled and unrecognizable shouts, punctuations of screams and thudding explosions that filled my quickly deafened ears with a sensation of cotton fiber. The stench of ordnance scorched my nostrils and throat, but my hammering heart pumped my lungs to take in every breath of oxygen that would surely be my last.

All around us the men were sprinting forward in concert with Himmel’s incredible pace, firing their machine pistols and hurling their grenades. It struck me at once that he ran with the utter arrogance of a man in his own backyard, though he certainly had never set foot in this place before. At one point, he suddenly stopped before a huge concrete bunker, and of course I smashed right into him and bounced off his pelvis. When I gained my footing again, I saw through the heavy smoke a wide entrance to the redoubt. I bent over to try and catch my breath, and just then a figure wearing a Tommy helmet suddenly appeared from around the corner of the edifice and Himmel reached out his arm and shot the man point-blank. I did not see the victim fall, for my eyes instinctively shuttered, but when I opened them again Captain Friedrich was emerging from the bunker. He was grinning from ear to ear, his face spidered with streaks of blood that flowed from his now hatless blond hair, and his hand gripped the elbow of a Wehrmacht Panzer general.

The man was clearly in shock. He was middle-aged and gray all over, from his hair and through to the pallor of his skin, with his tanker’s tunic torn and blood spattered. I saw his jackboots angle forward as he began to crumple, and then Himmel gracefully stepped in, bent and slung the officer over his shoulders like a bear rug.

“Nach Hause!” the Colonel yelled, and then he was running back toward the helicopters, the entire complement of men close behind, spinning and firing their weapons madly as cover. I thought I had nary a breath left in me, but my legs instructed that now was not the time to quit, and I managed to shadow my master as he ran, the general’s form bouncing upon his shoulders like the fallen victim of a house fire.

The men hurled themselves into the helicopters, whose blades had never ceased to whirl, and some of them took to a knee and fired their machine pistols without end at the enraged survivors of the British hideaway. My teeth were set like those in a naked skull and my back compressed with every shot, my heart pounding in its anticipation of a bullet from behind.

Himmel suddenly stopped just at the lip of the helicopter compartment. Then he turned quite casually, the general limp upon his back.

“Did you get a photo?” he yelled at me.

Only then did I realize that the Leica had never left its pouch. I stared at it, amazed that it was still in the death grip of my fingers, and I looked up and wagged my head from side to side. The helicopter pilots were shouting, something was banging repeatedly off the iron sides of the machine, and I knew it was the impact of British bullets.

“Well?” the Colonel shouted again. “Take one!”

My mouth fell open. He could not possibly be serious! But I quickly saw that indeed we would not leave this hell unless the master had his souvenir. Somehow, my fingers managed to open the pouch and I extracted the camera. Something kicked at the mud next to my boot and I leaped a bit, while my quaking hands lifted the Leica; yet I could not even see through the viewfinder, as my eyes had filled with the tears of the absolute conviction of my death. More bullets rang off the helicopter, the blades were churning up a thunderous wind, the pilots were shrieking, and I saw Himmel grin like some ungodly and calm white hunter in the African veldt as I clicked the shutter.

And then I fainted.

III

IN JUNE OF 1943, I became a corporal in the Waffen SS.

I shall not insult the reader with a host of limp excuses, or in any way deny that I coveted the rank and title which only months before would surely have repulsed me. However, I do beg patience in the hearing of my explanation.

Had I remained in all technicalities a civilian in the employ of the army, I would have continued to receive the concomitant pay, which amounted to essentially nothing. On the other hand, as a field draftee, and instantly granted a rank suited to my tasks as Colonel Himmel’s adjutant, I would be rewarded the monthly stipend stipulated by Wehrmacht rules and regulations. Most of that pay would be recorded in my Soldbuch, yet issued directly to my mother in Vienna, while I retained some pocket money for the occasional purchase of a black-market treat. One might say that my motive here was purely mercenary, although the benefits to my mother, especially were I to fall in battle, assuaged my discomfort upon being issued the Rottenführer collar tabs.

Thus were the rewards of becoming an official member of Himmel’s Commando. The drawback, at least so far as I considered it at the time, was Himmel’s stipulation, which he informed me of prior to my promotion.

You see, I was still a virgin.

And the Colonel refused to have a virgin serving in his order of battle.

He was not, as far as I could assess, a sexual deviant of any sort. He simply believed that a sexually naive soldier was an incomplete man, spending too much time engaged in fantasy and wonder, carrying a needless mental burden that could prove a dangerous distraction.

“A man who has not bedded a woman spins in circles,” he explained. “The hormones remain unreleased and his potential bottlenecked. Take care of this, Shtefan, and you shall receive your rank.”