the Knight’s Cross ‘for his courage in single-handedly wiping out a unit of enemy troops.’
Then he was posted to a training camp where he worked on the new Tiger tanks fitted with tracks 2½ feet wide, anti-magnetic armour and adaptations to enable their engines to start in sub-zero Russia.
And all the time Wolff, still deemed unfit for active service, fretted to be back with the Leibstandarte proper as he read of the exploits of his heroes, Sepp Dietrich who answered only to Hitler, Jochen Peiper, the hero of Kharkov, and his swashbuckling comrade Kurt Meyer known as Panzermeyer.
By this time the SS Panzer Divisions had been formed under the command of an SS general. They were the most feared troops in Russia and Kurt Wolff yearned to be with them.
Once again he harangued his superiors until he was finally allowed to go before a medical board. By this time the SS were desperate for manpower — they had taken volunteers from Holland, Spain, Sweden, France (even fifty British) and ethnic Germans from the Balkans.
Wolff was pronounced fit.
In the early summer of 1943 he returned to the Russian Front where the Germans were on the defensive after Stalingrad, the biggest defeat inflicted on the Germans since the Napoleonic Wars.
But Wolff, sheltered from reality by his wounds, could not conceive of defeat. He hadn’t been brutalised. Nor, because of the physical defects of his teens, had he witnessed the early massacres and executions in Europe.
He was still an idealist.
He was the stuff heroes are made of.
He was the obvious choice for Grey Fox.
Wolff’s second test took place in a ruined farmhouse 150 miles behind the sagging German front-line.
He had been pulled back from the Viking — to which he had been seconded to patch up broken-down-tanks to an assembly camp prior to rejoining the Leibstandarte.
He was quartered in the farmhouse in one of the few rooms that still had a roof over it. (The farmhouse and the surrounding village had been razed by the Germans during the great advance.)
He shared it with two Wehrmacht officers, a Captain Steiner and a Major Wenck.
As he unpacked they remarked on the Runic flashes of lightning on his steel helmet and the death’s head on his peaked cap.
“So we have a member of one of the famous Panzer divisions as our guest,” remarked Wenck, unshaved, broken-nosed, a little drunk.
“Leibstandarte,” Wolff said briefly, throwing a grey blanket onto the crude wooden bed.
“Ah, the Führer’s bodyguard,” said Steiner, tall and arrogantly handsome except for the bags under his eyes.
Wolff didn’t reply. He lay on the bed, lit a Russian cigarette and stared at the ceiling.
“He’s certainly going to need one soon,” Wenck said. “The way things are going.
Wolff ignored him.
Steiner asked: “Been on the Eastern Front long?”
“Not long,” Wolff replied.
“Still think we’re going to win?”
“Of course,” Wolff told him. “The Russians have overextended themselves.”
“You really believe that?”
“I believe in ultimate victory.”
“I’m glad someone does,” Steiner said. He stood up, over six feet tall; he would have made a good SS officer, Wolff noted, except for his mentality. “Hungry?”
Wolff who was starving said: “I could eat something.”
“And drink something,” Wenck remarked. “A little vodka will do you good,” like a doctor prescribing treatment.
They went downstairs to the dining room. One corner of the roof was bared to the grey sky, now darkening. On the pinewood table stood two flasks of vodka, two bottles of Georgian wine, three green-glass tumblers, three tins of corned beef, a bowl of beetroot soup and some hunks of black bread. A log fire burned in the grate.
They were served by two plump-breasted Ukranian girls whom the two Wehrmacht officers eyed lasciviously.
“Mine’s the one with the thick legs,” Steiner said. “He,” pointing at Wenck, “out-ranked me. But she knows a trick or two, that one.” And to Wolff: “You can give her a tumble if you like. Get the dirty water off your chest. But don’t tire her out too much,” he said, sitting down and pouring vodka into the three tumblers.
Steiner stood up and clicked his heels. “To the Führer.”
They tossed back the vodka and Wolff felt it burn its way down his throat and drop like molten lead in his stomach. He poured himself a glass of wine to dilute it and thought: “I’ll probably get drunk but what the hell.”
In Poland he had drunk in moderation and had slept with a couple of girls, one of whom he had loved a little. But he had never abandoned his keep-fit regime, exercising when the hole in his belly had barely healed.
Steiner refilled the glasses while the girls, black-haired and gypsy-faced, hovered in the background.
“But don’t get taken in by them,” Wenck said gesturing at the girls with his glass. “When the Ivans get here they’ll have our balls just like that,” brandishing a carving knife.
Wolff said: “You seem very certain that the Russians will break through.”
“Will break through? Will?” The broken-nosed officer laughed theatrically. “They’re going through us like shit through a goose.” He stood up. “Anyway, my idealistic young friend, another toast. To the Leibstandarte, the elite within the elite.”
Wolff could hardly refuse the toast.
“What about you?” Steiner asked. “Do you have a toast?”
The vodka was slipping down easily now. Wolff stood up and raised his replenished glass. “To victory.”
“Jesus Christ,” murmured Wenck.
They drank.
Wenck snapped his fingers at the two girls. They opened the tins and placed the squares of meat, glistening with jelly, in front of the three officers.
At the same time Steiner slipped his hand up the skirt of one of them and said: “That’s my girl. No pants. Always at the ready like a good soldier.”
They ate hungrily, drinking more vodka washed down with the red wine. “Does Dietrich feed you like this?” Steiner asked, stuffing black bread into his mouth.
“He gets the best there is,” Wolff replied.
“But
