The Grave of Truth Read Online Free Page B

so splendid in their blue uniforms and were lost over the English Channel within a week of each other. It was his turn now, to prove himself as brave as they were, a German ready to die for the Führer and the Fatherland. He wished his mother and his grandmother had gone, when their friends the Schultzes packed up and left. He wasn’t just afraid for himself, because he had been taught that fear was childish and unworthy in a Hitler Youth; he could contain the niggle in his stomach that was becoming a nervous pain at the idea of being shot or blown up. He couldn’t bear the thought of his mother staying in that dank old cellar with his grandmother, their personal possessions heaped around them, and perhaps the house being hit by a shell or a bomb and the walls crashing down on top of them.…
    He shifted, and eased his legs to stretch the muscles that were cramped from sitting. Albert Kramer was on the left of him, his back balanced against another boy who was crouching forward, his head on his knees. He and Albert had been at the same school and joined the Hitler Youth at the same time. A few months separated them in age, and Albert had expected to get the senior post in the platoon. They had spent a large part of their lives together, but they were never friends. Albert’s father was in the Waffen SS; he had lost an eye and part of his left leg in an ambush in Poland during the retreat. Albert told them how every civilian in the area had been arrested and shot as a reprisal.
    Obersturmbannführer Kramer was in an Eastern hospital; nobody knew what had happened to him when the Russians occupied the area, but Albert told everyone his father must have died fighting. The Waffen SS were the best soldiers in the Reich; Albert’s eyes glowed when he talked about his father. He didn’t seem to mind that he was dead. He only lost his temper when it was suggested that his father might be a prisoner. No SS officer surrendered to those Russian swine. Max could remember him shouting, and how he cried with rage. He had thought, secretly, that he would have been happy if his father were somehow alive.… But then Albert was a fanatical type. He believed in the Führer and the Third Reich the way some people-believed in God.
    Albert had never had a doubt about the war or about victory. He should have been made platoon leader but Max was picked instead. He knew how Albert hated him because of it. He looked at his watch: it was nearly six o’clock. He was hungry; the boys had been given a bowl of potato soup when they had mustered earlier. They were all as thin as stray dogs; food was rationed just above starvation level; anyone found hoarding or using forged food cards was shot immediately, without a trial. Max yawned, and was ashamed to see his hand shake as he covered his mouth. He was afraid; he wondered how the other boys were feeling. Otto Stülpner was barely fourteen and small for his age. He was asleep on the ground, his face pinched and sallow in the emergency lighting. There were marks on his cheeks where he had been crying. The rifle lying beside him looked ridiculously big.
    Children, Max thought suddenly, and couldn’t stop the rush of indignation that followed it. Children sent out to fight against the Russian army, the crack troops specially chosen to reduce Berlin … Mongols from the East, if rumours were correct, savages with a licence to rape and slaughter without mercy. The stories from refugees fleeing their advance had filled the Berliners with terror and caused a mass flight of women and children from the city as the threat came closer. Little boys like Paul and Erwin Rapp and Fritz Kluge, who should have been sent to safety not told to go into battle with rifles as big as themselves and the children’s oath of loyalty to the Führer as their reason for committing suicide. All right for boys like Albert and himself. Sixteen was old enough when men of seventy were