Opposite Sides (56 page)

“
No, stay
inside. You can just as easily watch from here and as soon as the
plane’s taken off, the chauffeur can drive you home.”

Elisabeth loved and
admired her husband as much as any wife in the Reich was expected
to do. She had been deeply attracted to him from the first moment
of their introduction and now he had been promoted to Major, she
knew that she would have regular invitations to wine and cheese
evenings put on by other very senior officers’ wives. She would
have a busy schedule, and time would pass very quickly until his
next leave.

“
Take care,
Erwin,” she implored him in her soft, Mecklenburger accent.
Elisabeth always referred to him by his first name as she
considered ‘Hans’ rather too countryside and unsophisticated for
the office he held.

He laughed flippantly and
brushed her concerns away. He was pleased to be back with a
fighting unit where comradery and action went hand in
hand.

“
Don’t worry.
I won’t let the Tommies get me. Don’t worry, Elizabeth!”

“
But I do,
Erwin. I do!” She partly wound down the rain splattered small
window until she could look over the top, looking at him with
pleading puppy-dog eyes and fluttering her heavily mascaraed
eyelashes in his direction. Elisabeth never had even a hair out of
place, so perfectly manicured and presented she was.

“
With our
famous Feldmarschall in charge, we’ll soon wipe them out of
Africa.” He laughed under the umbrella and glanced in the direction
of his waiting plane. “Might even decide to stay near Tobruk on a
more permanent position.” He turned back and faced her, grinning
like a cheeky schoolboy. “How would you like to live there in all
that endless sun?”

“
Erwin, you
shouldn’t joke about such things.” She knew the time had arrived
for him to grab his attaché case, and leave. “Poor dear,” she
crooned. “I know you’ve got to do your duty. I could never leave
all my friends here. Sun or no sun, I’ll wait here until you have
your next leave.”

“
Shouldn’t be
too long, Elisabeth. In six months, maybe.”

Elisabeth wound the
window right down and wrapped her white-clad, delicate gloved
fingers around the smooth top of the glass.

Hans bent back into the
vehicle and pecked a kiss on the side of her cheek. The chauffeur
opened the boot lid and took out Major Resmel’s suitcase which
handed to a Grenadier for loading on to the plane.

“
My brave
Major! Stay safe, my darling!”

She blew him several
kisses as he walked away.

Hans walked across the
concrete towards the plane before turning and giving her a quick
wave with his free arm. She blew him a white-gloved kiss in
return.

“
Have you
loaded the bottles of wine and cigarettes yet?” he asked the
navigator.

“
Yes, Major.”
The man saluted. “All accounted for and ready.”

“
Excellent!
Let’s go, then.”

Just before he ducked his
head to enter the fuselage, Hans turned once more and waved. The
car was still on the concrete pad. Elisabeth’s white fingers were
still folded around the glass. Then, in the next instant, he
vanished from her sight. The door was shut, the engines fired and
the aeroplane turned and thundered down the concrete runway. The
tail lifted and a few seconds later, it climbed into the air only
to be quickly swallowed by the low grey cloud. Out through the
cockpit window was a grey curtain of nothingness. Only the constant
loud hum of the engines told its passenger that they were in the
air.

Elisabeth sat listening
as the engine noise got fainter and fainter until all she could
hear were the increasing splatter of raindrops hitting the
windscreen of the large black car.

The plane flew a zigzag
course to take them over towards the Sudetenland and then turned in
a slight south-westerly direction to cross the Austrian lowlands
before setting a final course to head south, flying down the
eastern coastline of Italy. They had been flying for many hours and
fuel was beginning to run low so the navigator made his way down
the fuselage to inform the Major that they would soon be landing.
The pilot selected his aerodrome and as the droning plane broke
cloud, Hans could see the unfamiliar ground nearing as they made
their approach and adjusted the flaps for finals.

“
Major
Resmel.”

The Italian officer gave
the fascist salute as the Major stepped on to the concrete
taxiway.

“
Heil
Hitler.”

He hoped that the rumours
were true that this officer knew some English, for the Italian
spoke no German. His English was bad but at least it was worth a
try.

“
Mos’ sorry .
. . there be, is a . . . ” He groped for the English
word.

“
Delay,”
added Hans, for he had already been forewarned that this refuelling
stop would take far longer than at first anticipated.

The Italian officer was
relieved that the Major understood.

“
Si
certo
.
Exactly.
There is a trouble.” The Italian pointed upwards into the partly
clouded winter sky. Hans nodded. He looked upwards but saw nothing
but sky overhead. “Two, three,
cinco
.” He held up five fingers to
make his message more easily understood. “
Aeroplanos
, Major.
Inglese . . . Americano
. . . they . . . ” He used his hand to show how the enemy
aircraft had appeared and swooped out of the gaps in the clouds and
sprayed their bullets over the airfield.

“When will it be safe to
take off, then?”

“
Momento
. . . in one o’clock, maybe
two.”

“
Two hours?
That would be too late to reach the next field. Ask someone to
arrange some accommodation.”

“
Day shon?”
The Italian officer was puzzled.

“
Hotel.”

“
Ah,
si, si . . . alloggio.
I
understand
,
Major. First, you have a drinka. Good café in
aeroporta
. Drink lotsa
good. Then I see for ‘otel.”

Hans slapped one hand on
the back of the other. He spoke, frustration in his
voice.

“
I was hoping
to be in Southern Italy before nightfall and to have landed at
Mareth the following day.
Scheisse
!”

Such a delay would mean
that he would not arrive in North Africa on the designated day. He
would have to send an encoded message via radio and give the code
word for day. All messages had to be sent under the strictest
orders, for to use unencrypted ones would be to tempt an attack and
death. With war now on two fronts, German forces were being
stretched and situations compromised. One did not dare take
unnecessary risks. The flight, itself, was risky enough: low,
skimming the sea, not enough height if anything went wrong, a
speeding tube, sweaty palms and thumping heart until the safety of
the African airfield was reached.

Although the fighting in
North Africa was still progressing well and Rommel’s Afrika Korps
was still making quite a name for itself, the fighting forces in
Russia were almost in a state of collapse. Both sides were
exhausted, yet the battles struggled on. Goebbels kept making his
promises and German wireless broadcasts kept repeating that it was
the Red Army that was near to collapse. Hans had secretly managed
to locate a wireless set of his own on the black market during his
time in Berlin so he could furtively tune in to the BBC broadcasts
from London. What he heard in those news items was at variance to
the news from home. By the end of March in 1942, a BBC news report
revealed that of a total of one hundred and sixty two combat
divisions in the East, only eight remained effective for any sort
of offensive missions.

A letter from Elisabeth
had told of Ott’s anger when he heard that several of his senior
officers had been taken from his Berlin office and sent out to the
east but as to the reason, she only wrote that an eastern victory
was just round the corner. She had no idea that fresh
reinforcements were desperately needed and that men were being
dragged from one fighting front to the next before collapse was
total. There was great fear that troops would become demoralised if
they heard such truths, so an even greater effort was made to hush
up such information. Wireless broadcasts were made only to inspire
soldiers to push themselves further and harder for the glory and
honour of the Fatherland.

No better
sacrifice, no greater honour could be attained by our heroes; they
go to their Valhalla as we sing our glorious praises. Through their
sacrifice, we will ultimately triumph! Long live the Führer! Long
live the Reich! Long live the people! Heil
Hitler
!

Goebbels did not say
anything about the one million men who perished, or the utter
despair of those who had managed to survive. But Hans knew. And
others in the Abwehr also knew. Hans knew because he had been
witness to a truth that was blanketed under a pile of
lies.

Better news came from the
Kriegsmarine. In the Atlantic, U-boots were sinking seven hundred
tons of British and American shipping a month. By September, Dr
Goebbles made the figures look astounding. In his daily broadcasts,
his speeches constantly reminded the German population that their
troops stood guard over the Reich from the Arctic Ocean to Egypt
and from the Atlantic Sea to the borders of Central
Asia.

There is
nothing to fear for the might of the Reich is great. For a thousand
years our people will look on this as one of the finest years in
our history. Your Führer continues to guide us along this path to
greatness. His greatness shall be your greatness! Germany’s
greatness reflects the greatness of its leader! Sieg Heil! Heil
Hitler
!

However, the fighting
man, those who were on each front, knew of a fear their masters
refused to heed; a fear of failure because of a lack of resources.
There were simply not enough trained men; not the expected number
of guns, tanks or planes; not enough raw materials to keep the
increasing appetite of the monster in check. All the time, their
leader demanded that fresh divisions be thrown into the fight. He
forbade any withdrawal along the Eastern Front and, in a fit of
rage, demanded the same for Africa. Rommel was just preparing to
attack El Alamein.

“
What the
bloody hell are we supposed to fight with? We need weapons, not
bottles of wine!”

Officers screamed at each
other. Their words were the same: Eastern Front or North Africa.
Always the same. Words to attack flooded in every direction out
from Berlin.

“
As the
propaganda minister keeps promising a swift end to the war and
victory for the Fatherland, why aren’t the supplies coming
through?”

Hans could only point out
that in their case it was because Britain still controlled the sea
and air routes. He knew that the men of the Afrika Korps would do
anything for Rommel but to lose large numbers of them because of a
lack of supplies was stupid. Britain was too well organised and
even trying to bring in supplies by night did not stop the convoys
of trucks being destroyed by the RAF. Never-the-less, Rommel
received a message from Hitler himself demanding that he throw
everything he had into the new offensive and hold fast. Every
Panzer, man and gun was to be on the battlefield: for victory or
annihilation.

The day began, as usual,
now cold and damp as a warning of the winter rains to come. Battle
lines were bloody as neither side was prepared to move back from
its position. Rommel had a total of one hundred thousand men, of
which half were men in his Afrika Korps. The rest were made up of
Italian battalions still under the leadership of Italian generals
and officers. The German officers complained that the Italians were
not interested in fighting any more. Moral was low as news filtered
through that more of their troops had been taken prisoner and
together with food rationing, there were those who were only too
willing to throw in the towel. Yet there was a glimmer of hope.
Under strict German discipline, success would prove to be
theirs.

Rommel was a leader who
considered his men first. Against Hitler’s orders, he withdrew his
troops from the offensive battle positions at El Alamein and
prepared to dig in and hold. For a while there was a stalemate but
by early November, British tanks penetrated the Axis lines. The
foot soldiers, mainly Italian, were left to surrender in vast
numbers as the remnants of Rommel’s divisions fell back. They
regrouped near Benghazi. It was an impossible position to be in:
only a fraction of his battalions had survived and they had been
left with little to fight with. To survive, the Afrika Korps was
forced into sending raiding parties behind the lines.

Hans, with his excellent
knowledge of English, accompanied them on several excursions,
listening for any conversations that may be to Rommel’s advantage.
Sometimes, they would be gone for a week and when hope was fading
of their return, they would re-surface as soon as it was dark.
Other groups executed swift, short-burst attacks on the British
forces in the hope of obtaining the much needed fuel and supplies
their army lacked.