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
