Chapter Four.
Karyn turned the Daimler-Benz out onto Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. The whole road was deserted. Nothing moved, all the way down to the Stresemannstrasse junction. She glanced at the bullet, and shell-pocked hulk of number eight. A wrecked Opel closed ... one of the notorious Polizei "Gefangenentransporters"... the "Green Minna" prison transports used to ferry their victims to this dreadful building for "interrogation" leaned drunkenly against the kerb accompanied by a smashed SfKfz10 Half-track and two burnt-out Kubelwagens strewn across the road in front of the abandoned Gestapo headquarters. Here and there; the odd tattered curtain flapped forlornly from the yawning, glass-less upper windows. She shivered as she drove past. Even in its present carcass-like state, the ugly edifice still exuded its sinister aura. She couldn't know that the notorious south wing of the dreadful hulk, where, what had once been sculptors' workshops, but were now Gestapo prison cells contained the sprawled corpses of most of the remaining prisoners... murdered in cold blood by their captors during the previous night.
The Kunstbibliothek... the State Art Library building next door at number seven, was a gutted shell. Only the Haus der Flieger on the opposite side of the road, and the Völkerkundemuseum on the corner of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and Stresemannstrasse were relatively intact.
As she came out into Stresemannstrasse and turned towards Potsdamer Platz, another barrage of Russian shells began falling around the Voss Strasse area. She accelerated up the rubble-littered road past the battered Haus Vaterland and the ruined Potsdamer Platz Bahnhof; noticing that the Feldgendarmerie roadblock was now abandoned. The Columbushaus had taken a few more hits; it had obviously caught fire and was a smoke-blackened monster, with half the letters attached to the frontage of the eighth floor that spelled out its name, now missing, and mingled with the glass and rubble on the wide pavement around its base.
Bellevue Strasse looked relatively passable. Most of the buildings were little more than towering, battered frontages open to the skies. The buildings that had housed the renowned Café Josty, the famous Weinhaus Rheingold, and the Hotel Esplanade were roofless smouldering ruins. Farther along; the Tiergarten Café was virtually demolished. She turned left, around the battered remains of the Rolandbrunnen fountain at Skagerakplatz, and headed west down the wasteland of Tiergartenstrasse.
All the buildings on the left-hand side of the road were ruined, but the most dreadful sight was the shattered southern Tiergarten. Scarcely a tree still stood intact, and the once-elegant Rosengarten was an alien, torn-up landscape sprinkled with an incongruous handful of statues that had somehow survived the bombardment. As she came level with the cratered Grosser Stern Allee, just slightly to the west of the Swedish Legation; a figure stepped out into the road about a hundred metres ahead and waved his arm to stop her. It was a large Russian soldier cradling a sub-machine gun. Her first thought was to run him down, but he raised the weapon and repeated his signal for her to stop.
Gently, she applied the brakes and brought the car to a halt. The soldier walked cautiously up to the vehicle, covering her with his sub-machine gun. She waited for him to grunt the fateful words: "Frau Komm!"... But, he said nothing. He looked her up and down; noting her Rote Kreuz armband and the pile of First-aid chests on the back seat of the Daimler-Benz. He jerked his thumb back in the universal gesture... "Out!" She climbed out of the vehicle; he grabbed her arm and marched her roughly towards one of the bombed-out villas. As he dragged her into the blackened shell, her mind was working coldly. If this was going to be one of the infamous Russian rapes; could she reach the fighting knife in time? He continued dragging her down a shattered corridor and stopped at a charred, and paint-blistered door. He lifted his sub-machine gun and hammered on the panelling with the shoulder stock. The door creaked open and a figure appeared... a young Russian Major who looked her up and down. If the decorations on his singed, and well-worn Gymnasterka were anything to go by; he was a combat officer. His German was halting and schoolboyish…
'You are a Nurse? We need combat dressings... Panjemajo?'
Karyn nodded, and replied in deliberately imperfect Russian,
'I understand you. I have medical supplies that I was trying to get to the dressing station at the Flak tower. What do you need?'
He studied her curiously.
'Your Russian is very good. Where did you learn to speak it?'
She smiled.
'I was born in East Prussia. As a child, I played with our Russian neighbour's children as if the Border didn't exist.'
He nodded, and suddenly grabbed her right arm by the elbow; studying her sleeve closely. Then, a smile creased his handsome, grubby, combat-stained face.
'So; no trace of any Fascist badges being unpicked. You are truly one of "The Blind Angels."
He was, of course referring to the DRK District triangle patch worn since the German Red Cross officially came under the control of the Nazi Party and became a Nazi entity. Karyn gazed at him seriously.
'If you mean, would I tend one of your wounded men in exactly the same way that I would tend one of ours? Then, yes; I suppose you are correct in what you say, Major.'
He nodded.
'Good. Now come with me. I have a patient for you.'
He led her further into the ruin to a small room that appeared to have once been the back kitchen. A young girl soldier lay face-down on the floor covered by a greatcoat; with an older medical orderly kneeling by her side. As they entered, he glanced up at them; a look of hopelessness in his eyes. Karyn knelt by the girl and gently lifted the greatcoat. Two large, blood-soaked shell dressings covered her waist. Very gently, she lifted one of the dressings. The girl gave a tiny whimper. The sight of the wound made Karyn bite her lip.
The girl had a huge hole torn in her lower back, through which, Karyn could plainly see that her spine was broken. Both her kidneys were crushed, and there were other soft, wet things visible in the dreadful wound. She glanced at the old medic. He quietly shook his head. She gently replaced the sodden dressing and stood up; motioning that the medic and the young Major should move away.
Outside the little room she turned to the Major.
'How did this happen? How long has she been like this?'
The Major gave her a helpless look.
'One of our shells exploded close to us, and she caught a big lump of shrapnel... about an hour ago. Can you do anything?'
She turned to the old medic.
'What has she been given for the pain?'
He gave a sad, and typically Russian shrug;
'Codeine pills and vodka... There is nothing else.'
The Major touched her arm.
'Can you help her? She's little Aneska... our "Nevaéssta"... our squad Sweetheart.'
Karyn sadly shook her head.
'Her back is broken, and her kidneys are crushed. It's a miracle she hasn't already died from shock. All we can do is to make certain she doesn't suffer for a moment longer than absolutely necessary.'
The old medic nodded. His hand reached for his Tokarev pistol.
She stopped him.
'No, Tovarishch; not like that. I have morphine in the First-aid kits in my car.'
She turned to the young Major and saw the pale tracks of tears down his dirty cheeks. He turned, and quickly wiped them away.
She took his arm and said quietly,
'If you agree, I can give her a big overdose. She will simply go to sleep and never wake up again.'
He nodded; and told one of his men to go to fetch one of the First-aid kits from her car. In a few minutes the soldier returned with a Verbandkasten. She knelt by the girl and opened the lid. Breaking open its cardboard box, she took out the hypodermic syringe and reached for the vial of morphine sulphate. Where would be the place to make the injection for it to have the swiftest effect? Probably straight into the artery in her neck. She motioned to the old medic to take the vial of alcohol and clean up the injection site whilst she prepared the syringe. This done; she brought the loaded syringe towards the girl's neck.
As the needle touched the girl's skin; her eyes opened and she looked at Karyn. The girl soldier was very pretty; in spite of her pain-racked face. She was almost a Russian version of Karyn; the same blonde hair and blue eyes. And to think that those maniacs who had brought Germany to her knees had rated girls like this one as "Untermenschen."
The girl soldier gave Karyn a tiny, tight smile as the needle went in, and twenty millilitres of instant oblivion flowed into her carotid artery. Karyn smiled gently to her and stroked her hair as the girl began to drift off. Turning to the old medic; she told him to give her two more injections of twenty millilitres when she was asleep. That should be more than enough. He nodded, and took the syringe.
Standing up; she told the Major that he could have four of the Verbandkasten from the car as well as what remained of the one on the table. He nodded, and said that he was grateful. It would be in her best interest if she abandoned any hope of getting to the Flak tower. She should drive straight down to the Cornelius Bridge; cross the Landwehrkanal, and drive as fast as she could down Kurfürstendamm and head out towards Potsdam.
The Americans had stopped their advance at the River Elbe to let Stalin take the city. The Third Shock Army and The Second Guards Tank Army were coming in from the north; and the Third Guards Tank Army was coming up from the south to close the noose around Berlin. Zhukov's tanks, sweeping across the northern suburbs, had cut all the roads leading to the west and were about to link up with Konev's drive from the south. His face became serious.
'Our front-line assault troops...'
He waved his hand around his squad;
'... Like these lads; are good, disciplined, decent soldiers, and have mostly left the Berlin women unmolested, but the second and third wave troops coming up from the south are pigs. The Kazakhs and other Asiatic troops are particularly bad. They have raped and pillaged widely. If you leave now, and drive like the wind; you may just slip through the tightening ring.'
He smiled; a sad smile.
'My name is Major Maksim Siegel. Perhaps we shall meet again one day. Thank you for saving little Aneska from suffering for any longer. We would have had no choice but to shoot her if you hadn't turned up. Now Go! And God speed, my pretty Blind Angel.'
Cornelius Bridge was still intact; but Budapester Strasse had been severely damaged by bombing, and the stark, ruined fang of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche fire-blackened, main bell-tower spire clawed accusingly at the sombre, smoke-filled sky above the battered, rubble-strewn Breitscheidplatz. The encirclement of the dying city was almost complete, but the vicious battle raged on; street by street, house by house, room by room. Whole neighbourhoods in the city had vanished completely. Hundreds of streets were in ruins. There were avenues that were now only deep craters lined by mountains of rubble, and the black, charred skeletons of former buildings stood gaunt and accusing, everywhere. Streams of civilians were heading for the shelter of the Flak tower that sat, brooding and ominous, off to the right in the shredded Zoologischer Garten. Its guns were, for the moment, silent.
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A dishevelled Schupo waved her down. His face was grimed with sweat and soot. He came around to her window.
'Thank God! Have you any spare medical supplies? We have many injured people here.'
She nodded, and indicated the pile of Verbandkasten on the back seat.
'Take those, but leave me two. I have to get down to the Feldlazarett at Potsdam. I just hope the Soviets haven't cut me off.'
He gave her a hard stare and took a deep, audible intake of breath.
'That's bloody risky. Why don't you come to the shelter with us? We could certainly use your help.'
She shook her head.
'I have my orders. They need all the help they can get, according to the last signal they sent.'
He nodded.
'Yes; Duty... the last honourable thing in this bloody shit-hole. Well, good luck... and you'd better use the klaxon. The whole Ku'damm area is crawling with people right down to Henriettenplatz. If I were you, I would go down Kant Strasse all the way to the Funkturm. Do a left there onto König Elisabeth Strasse, and the entrance to the AVUS will be right in front of you. Just watch out for the checkpoint on the other side of Savigny Platz; they're Hitler-Jugend, and they're cocky little bastards.'
The buildings lining Kant Strasse were considerably less damaged than those she had passed recently. Obviously the main bombing had been directed further east into the city. In the distance she saw the wide space of Savigny Platz. She switched on the Martin horn... its strident cadences blared out... a synchronised rising and falling and rising, the echoes wailing across the bombsites and resonating back eerily from the charred walls. She flicked on the car's headlamp switch and accelerated.
The checkpoint was a hundred metres west of the Platz. The HJ Oberkameradschaftsfuhrer… Senior Comrade Unit Leader; a typical, future "Aryan Superman" in charge of the squad watched the approach of the white Daimler-Benz through ice-pick blue eyes. He recognised it as being a Sanitäts-Staffeln vehicle apparently on top-priority business because of its braying "Alarm" horn and blazing headlamps. Should he stop it and check the driver's papers? His ideological manipulation took over... the unquestioning obedience to authority. It didn't look as though the driver had any intention of stopping... so it must be exactly what it seemed to be. He stepped out into the road and officiously waved the "emergency" vehicle through. The driver, wearing a Deutsches Rote Kreuz helmet, raised "his" hand in acknowledgement and roared off down Kant Strasse with the Martin horn still blaring.
In the distance; Karyn saw the Berliner Funkturm Radio transmitting tower. As she approached the junction at König Elisabeth Strasse, she noticed that a shell or bomb had destroyed one of its main supports leaving it teetering on three legs. It seemed a miracle that it hadn't toppled over. The restaurant platform half-way up the tower looked to be burnt out. She turned left onto König Elisabeth Strasse and was faced with a huge mound of rubble that could only be the remains of the AVUS Einfahrt... the race track main entrance building. Farther on to the left; the race control tower that overlooked the north end of the circuit still stood; albeit a little battered and scarred; and the wooden grandstand parallel to the start/finish straight was still intact. The two parallel ribbons of asphalt stretched away into the distance.
She settled herself more comfortably in her seat and accelerated away past the Berlin exhibition grounds that had been almost completely destroyed by the bombing raids almost two years earlier. The Deutschlandhalle was roofless, smoke-blackened, and ruined. Strangely enough; as she continued on down the southern track; she noticed through the trees, that the little settlement of Die Siedlung Eichkamp almost next door to the Deutschlandhalle was virtually untouched.
The surface of the old racetrack was in a reasonable condition. She cautiously increased the speed until the speedometer read seventy Km/h. The thick, all-terrain military tyres howled on the asphalt. Imagine racing down here at almost two-hundred Km/h! It didn't bear thinking about! The track was about eight-metres-wide and separated from the return track by an eight-metre, grass median strip, effectively making the race track resemble a dual-carriageway. Within a couple of kilometres, the track was out in the country, flanked by expansive hectares empty of anything much other than scrub and woodland.
One would have thought that a race track capable of allowing speeds of up to two-hundred and-sixty Km/h would have been as flat as possible. This was not the case with the outward leg to the south. The ground fell away quite steeply amongst the trees to the right-hand side of the track, and there was a distinct, sweeping "kink" at about three-kilometres, opposite the Grünewald shunting yard. Even at the relatively low speed she was doing; Karyn felt the Daimler-Benz sway gently on its independent suspension as she came into the "kink." A little farther south; as she roared over the bridge that spanned the road to Hüttenweg; she noticed the glimmer of water through the trees off to the left. She was not to know that this was Krumme Lanke; and that five-hundred-metres beyond the far edge of the shimmering lake, ReichsFührer-SS Himmler had built his SS-Kameradschaftssiedlung... the Comradeship settlement where members of the three Berlin SS main offices and their families could live together in an Aryan community. She was also not to know that the lake was already full of bodies. Dozens of SS families had preferred to swallow a cyanide capsule rather than face the "justice" of the approaching Russians.
The woodland was becoming less dense. She must be approaching the end of the race track. There! The remains of Die Südkurve... the old South curve. It had been dismantled in 1939 when the track was connected to the new Reichsautobahn, but the remains of the old wooden footbridge were still sprawled across the track! Karyn began braking hard. There was no way to get past the wreckage other than cutting across the grass onto the old return track. Beyond Die Südkurve the new section of Autobahn curved around the station at Nikolassee and headed south. Immediately before the wreckage she spotted what appeared to be a turning to the right leading to a road which seemed to have run parallel to the south track. She stopped and consulted the map. This road was identified as Königsweg, and was shown as running all the way back to the start of the AVUS. It continued in a long curve to the south past the Charlottenburger Wasserwerke, and then curved west around the southern border of Grosser Wannsee towards Babelsburg.
The IL-2M Shturmovik ground attack aircraft piloted by Starshiy Serzhant… Senior Sergeant Sergei Dombrovski of the 1st Guards Assault Aviation Corps; 2nd Air Army, attached to 1st Ukrainian Front; came howling down the long, straight AVUS at an altitude of eighty-metres, in search of a final victim before he turned for home. It had been good hunting for his faithful old "Ilyusha" today. She had destroyed a convoy of Wehrmacht trucks, a Panther tank; and a couple of the ugly, eight-wheeled SdKfz 234/2 "Puma" armoured cars. He glanced at his ammunition counters. "Ilyusha" was out of cannon shells, but the indicator for the machine guns still read twenty-percent. Just enough for a little light strafing, and then, home for tea! He didn't really want to go deliberately looking for trouble at this time of the day; but there was no point in taking any unused ammo home.
His gunner, twenty-two year old Yevreytor…Corporal Vladik Borowski was from one of the penal companies of air gunners. Somewhere down the line they had considered him to be "an enemy of socialism" or "enemy of the people" and had written him what they hoped would be a one-way ticket. The Shturmovik's rear gunner position was known amongst the crews as the "coffin box" because it was uncomfortable, exposed to the elements and enemy fire, and had hardly any armour at all. The life of a Shturmovik rear-gunner was certainly exciting, but often rather short. The death rate among the Shturmovik air gunners was exceptionally high; but those who survived could theoretically clear their sentences after nine missions. The survivors, however, were nearly always transferred to mine clearing or other units for "medical reasons" before this could happen. Counting today's mission; Vladik had eight missions under his belt, including the assault on the Seelow Heights; and Dombrovski had promised himself that he would make sure that his gunner would be the exception to this shitty rule.
As he came down towards the end of the two parallel roads, he spotted something under the trees out to his starboard quarter. He opened the throttle and climbed away; banking to port and gaining altitude as he positioned himself for the classic Shturmovik ground-strafing run. With this attack scenario; the target was usually kept to the pilot's left, and the attack was executed with a turn and shallow dive of thirty-degrees onto the target. He flicked up the safety cover of his machine-guns firing button and centred the position where the supposed vehicle was, in the sighting ring of his reflector gun sight. Pushing the throttle forward, he began his shallow dive.
Watching the target area through the gun sight, he saw a sudden movement between the cloaking trees. He glanced at the airspeed indicator; two-hundred-and-ten-knots... close to optimum attack speed. His thumb hovered; then rested on the firing button. Just a little closer...
Suddenly, the target moved out from under the trees. It was a white car with large, unmistakeable Red Crosses painted on it. Dombrovski's reaction was almost instantaneous. Jerking his thumb away from the firing button, he hauled back on the control column and shoved the throttle lever hard forwards, breaking the copper wire closing off the emergency-power gate of the throttle quadrant. Faithful old "Ilyusha" clawed her way back up into the heavens with her engine bellowing at maximum emergency revs.
His gunner Vladik Borowski's panicky voice crackled in his earphones.
'Holy Shit, Sergei! What was that all about? I nearly smacked my nuts into the gun breech on this fucking swing they call a seat!
Dombrovski grinned as he throttled back and hauled "Ilyusha" out of her screaming power-climb.
'Sorry, Vladik; it was a medic wagon... probably a nurse's car. We fly with the Angels, not splatter them all over the landscape.'
The gunner's voice crackled again.
'I agree. I don't have any time for all that Yid hate-mongrel Ilya Ehrenburg's shit about wiping out the entire German Race; and besides which, I know your sister's an Army Medic. I'd have been really pissed off if you had pressed the tit.'
Dombrovski nodded to himself as he settled "Ilyusha" into level flight at two thousand metres indicated. As he turned for home, he wondered where his eighteen-year old little sister, "Voenfeldsher"… Lieutenant-Medic Catrina Dombrovski now was. He had last heard of her being in a rudimentary field hospital set up in a farm on the north-west edge of the battle-scarred, deserted small town of Seelow after the surviving Germans had begun their fighting retreat back down the road to their last line of defence... the "Wotan Line", ten-to-fifteen-miles behind the front line of the crescent-shaped Seelow Ridge... and eventually, their Berlin Valhalla. Little Catrina worried him. She had always refused to carry her side-arm; saying that she tried to save lives, not take them.
Reports mentioned that the SS "Nederland" Division... a volunteer unit of Dutch mercenaries had been deployed on the Seelow Heights, and they wouldn't think twice about raping and then shooting an unarmed girl medic. If any of them had survived the slaughter and slunk away into the surrounding area; then she could be in real danger. He just hoped that she was sensible enough to stay in the field hospital whilst the shock troops mopped up the surviving Germans.
Lieutenant-Medic Catrina Dombrovski wiped her forehead with the back of her bloodied hand and bent once more to her task of attempting to suture together the shredded remains of a young Shturmovik pilot who had caught a large piece of shrapnel in his abdomen as his aeroplane had been shot down by the quad 20mm guns of one of the German Flakpanzer IV “Wirbelwind” self-propelled anti-aircraft guns ranged on the edge of Seelow town, on the heights overlooking the western flood plain of the River Oder
The old barn that had served as the field hospital for the last six days smelled like... and resembled a slaughterhouse. The whole rickety edifice reeked of blood and excreta, vomit, and dirt; and the sickly-sweetish smell of early-stage gas gangrene. On the rough table next to her; two Red Army Medical Service doctors were performing amputations using only vodka as an anaesthetic. They worked swiftly. As soon as the offending limb was removed, it was thrown into an enamel bucket resting on the dirty, blood-stained floor.
The wounded lay in rows on the dirty floor. There were no beds; just planks and benches salvaged from the shattered buildings in the westerly fringes of the little town. The dying and the dead lay next to each other. Medical orderlies removed the corpses and amputated limbs as, and when they could, and dumped them in a large, communal burial pit scraped out by the pioneers, for want of any better way to dispose of them.
The only lights in the field hospital were from "Hindenburg-Spar Lampen"... Hindenburg Candles. These were flat circular bowls made from pasteboard and filled with tallow. When the short wick in the centre was lit they would burn for some hours. They had originally been designed for use in the trenches of the First World War. They were extremely smoky and gave off a foul, acrid smell from their dim, guttering flames; but there was nothing else.
Catrina Dombrovski studied the pain-sweated face of the young pilot. He was only about twenty; but he had been lucky... if lucky was a word you could feasibly use in this ramshackle monument to the bloodbath behind the Seelow heights. The shrapnel had struck him in his solar plexus, hacked through the muscle, and ripped across the lower quarter of his stomach. When they had brought him in, he had been deathly pale and quiet... and they were the ones you had to worry about. The thrashers and screamers could be left for a while. There was nothing left in the way of anaesthetics or antiseptics; the assault on the Seelow Heights had cost casualties counted in thousands of the Soviet forces. The German engineers had released water from a reservoir upstream, which turned the flood plain into a swamp, and left the armour and troops having to share the few remaining passable roads which were easily targeted by the defenders.
When she had examined his dreadful wound; the only anaesthetic available had been a vicious uppercut from a large Guards Medical orderly. The shrapnel had missed both his oesophagus at the top, and his pyloric sphincter at the bottom of his stomach. With infinite care, she sutured the laceration back together. He would make it provided shock, infection, or peritonitis didn't get him first. Infection she could do something about. The other two were in the lap of the Gods. Finishing the suturing; she snapped her blood-stained fingers at the assisting orderly who handed her a half-full bottle of vodka and a sheet from a bundle of newsprint that was being used for swabs and dressings. Newsprint can save a man from gas gangrene.
Carefully, she tucked the sheet of newsprint into the airman's wound and poured neat vodka over her suturing. With the excess soaked up by the page from a three-month-old copy of Pravda; she gently removed the sodden newsprint which had effectively acted as a swab, and picking up her needle and suture thread, began to repair the torn abdomen muscle. This done; all that was left, was to close. If he survived the night, he would have an impressive scar to show to the girls. She allowed herself a tiny smile. OK; let's make it a heroically attractive one.
As the young pilot was carried away from her operating bench, she took a quick swig from the vodka bottle proffered by her orderly. She had been working for ten hours non-stop, now; and there was always another shattered body waiting for her to attempt to repair to some degree of normality.
As the next stretcher bearers approached, she sighed, and wondered if, one day, the mangled remains of the human being laid on the rudimentary operating table in front of her would be her brother Sergei.