Thursday 29th: Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941

He remembers resolving, that night, to practice his musicianship – he was being taught piano, violin, and ‘composition’ at school – so that he could become a professional musician or, better still, a composer.

The viola player was a young woman, maybe five years older than the teenaged Mechelen, and her bare arms were goosepimpled in the cold church. He was struck by the seriousness with which she regarded her dimly-lit score on its rickety metal stand, and by the way that her face relaxed suddenly into a bright smile as soon as a movement ended and she met the eyes of her fellow players: a spark of warmth and of wordless congratulation passed between them, and Mechelen envied them their closeness and camaraderie. Particularly, he envied the men their closeness to this slender young woman with her hair piled up and pinned on the back of her head. Her dark green satin dress. Her goosepimpled skin. If he learned his music lessons properly, and became proficient at his playing and writing, young ladies like this would take notice of him: at the moment, though, he was ignorant and untalented, conscious of his limitations. Whenever the viola player scanned the faces in the pew Mechelen was sitting in, he had to look away, lest she catch his eye and detect his ignorance and wavering confidence. He shyly tries to catch sight of her bare throat, and the start of the bony declivity dropping away to her flattish chest.

The piece that really held him and inspired him was a four-voice [Bach] fugue that the quartet played about halfway through their recital. The rest of the music had been very pleasant, and proficiently played, but there was something special about this fugue: he’d listened to the cellist’s stilted introductory speech and resolved to try and follow just one of the lines all the way through while the other instruments echoed it and wove their delayed echoes around the first instrument’s next development of the theme. Partly this was in recognition of this composer’s greatness and centrality to the western canon (and thus a desire to prove to himself that he was worthy of having this great music played to him), and partly it was the intellectual challenge of being able to maintain focus on the interwoven but distinct voices of the different instruments.

The first violin was the instrument nearest to Mechelen, and he stared alternately at the violinist’s fingers and face (the musician’s eyes reflecting the candlelight glassily) as the slow, elegant opening phrase was articulated gently in the gloom, the echoes resonating up into the pitch-dark space between the cracked, barely-visible wooden rafters. Beneath the sound of the music cracked the dry sound of seatbacks creaking under people’s shifting weight.
He made it to bar [15], just after the third instrument’s voice had joined, before he last track of the first violin’s lilting line. Even watching the violinist’s every movement and mapping these movements to the onflow of sound didn’t enable him to pick up the separate voices again. So he just luxuriated in the overlapping waves of sound, waving his head and torso gently in time to the echo and sway of the string sounds. And he vowed that he would meet the challenge of the fugue and – one day – master the understanding of it. It would not defeat him.

[H] waits for the officers’ applause to recede and then says, “This will be my last song gentlemen; I’m afraid that all this dust has made me a little hoarse.” (Some wag inevitably says “Nay, nay”, and there’s some willingly forced laughter.)

3. Captain Thomas is pleased that [H]’s recital will soon be ending – this isn’t his idea of musical entertainment: far too knowingly ‘sophisticated’ for his liking.

Of course, the traditional tunes and poetry are all very well in themselves, but there’s something cloying and precious about their combination in this ‘art song’ arrangement that robs them of their authenticity and beauty. So artificial. In his own head, he’s been trying to listen to his brain’s reconstruction of one of the jazzy dance band arrangements that became so popular during the 30s, and to which he and his fiancé used to dance every Friday and Saturday night at the Rialto Ballroom in L_ge. Lise was a fine dancer, very natural and fluent, and he always felt clumsy in her presence, even though she would help him, and make it appear that he was leading forcefully and knowledgably. But she was doing all the work for him, of course.

His favourite part in the dance band tunes is when the trumpets and trombones take up their little ‘solo’ parts in the middle of the songs; when the band leader steps back and smiles, and the boys with the trombones and trumpets stand up together and swing their horns in synchrony. It always makes him smile, and fills him with a naïve delight. That’s real music – real people playing their hearts out and making people laugh. No over-intellectual flannel getting in the way.

In ’36 Lise had her hair cut in the season’s fashionable short style, with a suggestion of curl s at the hair ends. This cut required a lot of preparation and maintenance, and that summer they seemed to arrive at the dance hall later and later due to Lise’s delays. It shames him to remember how irritated he became with Lise, and how sarcastically he would commentate on the trams they had missed as they stood at the roadside stop waiting for the next one [in the city’s fuming summer evening dusk]. Lise was a remarkably even-tempered young woman (everyone remarked at how different they were as a couple in this respect), but he could see her face tighten, the skin looking hard and taut in the glow of the streetlights, and she would tensely light a cigarette (not offering him one) and drag savagely at it. He remembers her fingernails, painted red, dark and glossy under the lights.

Sunday 25th – Wednesday 28th: Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941 (token Christmas holiday efforts…

[This whole segment needs to do two things when it’s reworked/edited: (i) convey a sense of momentum and optimism – the war machine is at the height of its power, and it’s seemingly unstoppable…this campaign is yet another chapter of success and glory, the latest in a series of chapters that started unfolding in 1938; they should be overwhelmingly buoyant and confident, exhilarated with the way the campaign is going – this doesn’t really come across at all at the moment; (ii) emphasise the variety of character and backgrounds of this key group of personnel – their uniformly high levels of education and achievement in civilian life, their variety of experience and interests, and the range of their skills; and, particularly, how normal what they are doing has become for them – not that it doesn’t cost them anything, but rather that it has become their normal way of being, with all the ups and downs and changing attitudes that mediate, in waves, the things that you do in your everyday existence – key informing text here is Klee, Dresser and Riess.]
The sun is setting, and all the champagne has been drunk. The horizon is an incredible blaze of orange, grey, purple and gold.
Mechelen has joined them, fresh from a ‘situation update’ at the mobile command headquarters, and he’s in a foul mood. He doesn’t want to talk about what he’s been briefed on. All the officers sense this reticence, and they direct their attention past Colonel Mechelen while still according him the peripherally expressed respect that his rank commands. (Jan finds this very difficult: he feels as if his whole attention should be directed towards the colonel, despite the latter’s distance and disengagement. But every time he catches Mechelen’s eye, Mechelen looks away with a barely-suppressed scowl. Jan doesn’t know where to look or what to do, so he takes another swig of vodka from his mug. The alcohol will make him more mellow, and he will care less.)
[…] [?]
The twilight is a deep, dusty grey blue now, with a last streak of gold on the horizon, and the air is full of wood smoke and piercing, plangent birdsong. Jan closes his eyes and leans back against the door of the staff car, wishing that he could have a lie down and a nap: traversing such great distances is tiring, and the mixture of summer dust and heavy exhaust fumes that he’s been breathing in all day have dried out his mouth and nose. His nostrils are sore when he breathes in.
Mechelen’s adjutant moves around the semi-circle of officers, topping up their glasses and offering more savouries.
[…]
Jan knows a little more about the other officers now. Their recent close proximity to each other, away from the hermetic (?) atmosphere of the camp, has yielded some greater intimacy and self-exposure; whenever the convoys stop for rest breaks, he often finds himself standing at the edge of a field or above a ditch, pissing next to someone who seems to keen to share some thought or memory – the strange landscapes and novel scenes of violence and aftermath seem to encourage reflection, comparison and faux-philosophical reflections. Ordinarily Jan would eschew these kind of speculations, but here, in the turmoil and excitement of the front line, any kind of reflection and commentary takes on a deeper, more profound-seeming dimension, as if any island of peace and reflection is an attractive contrast to the instability and mayhem of the advance.
Major [H] is going to sing for them. In civilian life he was a university administrator, but he had a keen interest in music, and had taken part in many amateur music recitals, specialising in the 19th century Lieder repertoire. Standing in the dusk, with his hands on his hips, he prepares to run through some favourite songs.
The first song is called [‘Red Evening’], and there are a few ironic smiles as [H], unaccompanied, he sings the opening bars. His voice is even and strong, a rounded baritone that he propels powerfully through the evening air. As he sings, and the beauty of the melody and the strength and quality of his voice become increasingly apparent, a surprised, rapt silence falls over the officers.
[Schubert ??– Abendrot] …or…
In the red evening, when I stood at my sweetheart’s door,
She called to me in her sweet voice,
Like a robin’s song in winter through the trees,
And all the world was shrunk to the circle of our love.

Red sun and black trees, and my sweetheart’s hand in mine,
Red sun and black trees, and the song of our love.

[verse, chorus…]

[Reveries?]
[1] Fisher, with vodka fumes rich in his nostrils when he belches, is still thinking about Beatrice and Gabriella, and about his two children: William is seven, and Julia is five. Beatrice often says in her letters that they miss their daddy, and they are the thing that he will find it hardest to give up – to let go of when the marriage ends. It must end: he cannot live without Gabriella. If he didn’t think that there was some time in the future when they will be together, he would not want to carry on living. But the children are difficult…
He almost hates Beatrice now – the thought of her fills him with sadness and disgust, a strange physical revulsion that makes him want to shiver, and to be free of all of these old burdens. It seems so unfair that he should be tied in this way, now that he has found the woman with whom he really should be sharing his life. But he also remembers the way that Julia clung to him on the last night of his leave and said “Please stay, daddy.” And how, for that moment when her little hands were clutching the lapels of his jacket, he had actually wanted to stay. In the morning, though, with the children asleep in their beds, breathing quietly under their covers, it had been easier to focus on the comparison between Beatrice and Gabriella, and to see the truth of what he knew he really wanted.
[2] Mechelen is angry because his unit is going to be held back in reserve for a week or two: the high command have deemed it necessary to blood some of the new groupings in the immediate aftermath of the advance, and to keep Mechelen’s troops back for later operations. Apparently they believe that Mechelen’s unit put in a ‘tired’ performance during their most recent sweep.
Mechelen knows where that ‘tired’ label came from – that little shit Becker, the recently-appointed camp/special operations inspector. Becker had been on site during their latest action, wandering around with his clipboard with a pencil tied to it, constantly straightening his tie and pushing his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. Fidgety little bastard. If that little fucker had done half as much service as most of my men…but he hasn’t. Straight out of training school and passing judgement on what we do – when he knows fuck all about anything. Fuck it. It makes you wonder…
Shaking his head, Mechelen waves Jensen over through the gloom and asks him to light the oil lamps, then swirls his vodka in the flickering, strengthening yellow lights. The first swig refreshes him, and by the time he’s finished the glass he can feel the clear alcohol penetrating his veins, bringing a sense of relief and reinvigoration to his body.
[H] starts to sing his second song. Mechelen had only half-heard the first one, though he’d recognised the tune. He tops up his glass, twists the base of the vodka bottle into the crumbly earth and dust underneath his canvas chair, and looks into the dusk, where [H]’s eyes and teeth are glinting in the oil lamp light as he sings. Mechelen never realised, until now, just what a fine singer [H] is: the notes are clear and pure, his breathing is even and well-timed, and he projects the sound around the group in a dignified, controlled manner. Mechelen taps his thumb and forefinger on his knee, picking up the rhythm of the music, imagining that he is the best informed of the officers when it comes to musical matters, and convinced that only he is picking up the subtleties of rhythm and phrasing in [H]’s performance. He smiles, realising slowly what a privilege it is to hear music-making of such a high quality.
[H]’s second song is another familiar one: a well-known poem set to a traditional tune. The poem is about the careless days of a young man’s life, before the cares of the world or of love have darkened his outlook and weighed him down with the tedious burdens of work or emotional upset; when all he needs to relax are the wild woods and streams of the homeland, where he can fish and hunt and roam free in the same way that the generations before him have done. It’s an archaic idea, somewhat ludicrous in the age of automobiles, mechanised warfare, heavy industry and mains electricity, but there is enough charm and tradition in the words and music for the thing to resonate in a way that a printed treatment could not do. It helps that the stars are coming out, that there’s a warm breeze carrying the smells of night, tobacco, and cooking through the air, and that the men are all drinking, and quite far from home – conditions in which nostalgia and idealised romanticism can flourish.
[H] holds the last note of the song, lets it fade down into the hollow summer evening. In the last resonance of the note, between the released tension of the melody and the drained dynamic of the shape of the song, Mechelen hears another transition to silence, one which he heard as a ten-year-old in the cold, echoey interior of the church at L_en, when the last vibrations of the strings of a cello, a viola and two violins heralded the dreaded end of the concert, and the audience, hushed, waited for the sound to fully die away before letting their percussive applause crash around the dark wooden interior, flickering the candlelight.

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Saturday 24th – Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941

The officers have gathered at the edge of the field beyond the verge, where they have set up their folding canvas chairs in a loose crescent, facing west. On the other side of the road the woods are sinking into shadow, and the smoke pall from the still-burning town helps bring down a premature darkness. But the western sky is mostly clear, just a few ribbons of cloud drifting across the late grey-blue.

Mechelen’s adjutant arrives clutching a batch of arm-thick salamis to his body, and he’s accompanied by two soldiers sharing the burden of a large crate (champagne and vodka) and some netting bags full of local bread.

“There’s cheese following along behind, and pickles,” the adjutant promises.

A few minutes later, as he drains the last of his champagne from his standard issue white enamel mug, Captain Thomas (?) says, “We really need to get things better organised. We need proper glasses, and ice buckets. Proper glasses, at the very least. And cigars.”

Lieutenant Fisher, behind Thomas’ back, rolls his eyes in that ‘here he goes again’ way, and catches Jan’s eye, winks, and raises his eyebrows. Smiles. Fisher finds Thomas’ small-bore carping far more irritating than he knows he really should, but it’s one of those repetitive little annoyances that gets under your skin, and which you only need a tiny glimpse of to reawaken the dozens of previous iterations that are lodged in your memory – poisonous little pellets of ire.

Fisher has larger issues to think about. He hasn’t seen his Gabriella for three months, and the last time he had sexual intercourse – six weeks ago on home leave, with his wife Beatrice in the dowdy fawn-coloured guest bedroom at her parents’ house at the foot of the mountains – is vivid in his mind, distancing him from happier memories of making love with Gabriella. He tries to hang on to the memory of that golden time – just three days! – that he and Gabriella spent together in Prague in the summer of ’39: the sunlight in her beautifully cut blonde hair, the smooth sheets, his taut belly slapping against hers as they moved together, the way she pinched her lower lip between her teeth as she looked frankly into his eyes. But Beatrice…he keeps remembering Beatrice’s brown hair plastered across her sweaty forehead in that little bedroom, with the bed creaking worryingly and his left hand damping down the oscillations of the headboard. And afterwards, the pair of them lying there drying, not touching each other, and the irritating sound of Beatrice sniffing and not-quite-clearing-her-throat. There were little bits of dust or dirt on the threadbare sheets, and he could feel them, gritty on the damp skin of his back and buttocks, whenever he shifted position. [That sense of something unsaid in the air above the bed – the sense that they’re both staring into that shadowy space, knowing that there’s something that they both want to touch upon, each knowing that the other person is lying there thinking about it, and not wanting to speak into that void…]

Ella, Ella. Fucking hell.

Here’s Mechelen’s adjutant again. This time it’s cigars, “Courtesy of Colonel [?] Mechelen. He’ll be along soon, gentlemen.”

“With the cheese, presumably?” says Thomas, and Fisher nearly chokes on his champagne.

Thursday 22nd – Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941

“And most of the women were raped of course – even the old women and the young girls. We caught some of the partisans soon after the massacre – some rival group of nationalists betrayed them. We had them here – ” – he gestures back over his shoulder with his thumb, towards the distant barracks – “ – for interrogation. Before they died, they said that the rapes were concerned with two things: the honour of their country, and to make sure that no man would want the women once they returned to their ancestral homeland. This is a weapon that they use in the way that they fight their wars – even against each other in their civil wars. It’s what we should expect if they ever defeat us. And it’s why we can never allow them to win. They’re barbarians.”

Jan can see that Mechelen is genuinely angry, frightened and moved. He looks away, afraid of embarrassing the older man. There’s oil on the track bed gravel below, and weeds thick between the sleepers. He thinks he can see scraps of clothing caught in the branches of the trackside bushes, and there are bits of rusting metal strewn along the bed of the cutting.

“So, anyway,” continues Mechelen, “we collected all the survivors and shipped them back to the homeland. The men are buried out there in graves at the edges of the fields.”
Jan squints through the leaves and branches to where crops are growing in ranked profusion. The air is vibrating with light and heat.

“And we caught most of the perpetrators. They’re buried near here, too. It was pretty ugly. Pretty ugly.”

Mechelen picks at his left thumbnail with his index finger.

“Let’s get back. I want to get something to drink.”

[…]

[NB – Before we get to the expulsions and the war and the Einsatzgruppen proxies we need to have established ‘the Slav’ as something alien to the westerners – something dark and fear-inducing, and ‘dirty and unhealthy’. As something mythically, subconsciously wrong and frightening – unassimilable and not rationally understandable. How? (i) via Jan’s childhood/youth/young manhood culture and upbringing – and popular iconography – all the influences (include. Education) that he’s been exposed to ever since he was a child, and the dominant images of Slavs therein…how could he think anything different, having been exposed to all this? And yet he could have turned out differently, of course…the elements of choice, and insight – compare Mathilde’s post-war upbringing, and her rejection of racism and bigotry – to a limited extent, at least…; (ii) ??]

[…]

The invasion is going incredibly well – much better than had been anticipated. The Russian’s border defences melted away under the shocking weight of the initial Imperial attack, and the enemy’s entire command and supply structures have collapsed. In many sectors, the Slavs are in headlong retreat, leaving behind men, vehicles, weapons and supplies of all kinds. Astonishingly, most of the day three objectives were taken before nightfall on the first day, and the only thing that’s holding up the Imperial troops’ advance is the need to wait for their own supply lines to be established. There’s almost no resistance, and no partisan activity. The local people are neutral at worst, and many of them are actively welcoming.

The speed of the advance means that Jan’s unit have been activated four days earlier than the plan stipulated: they crossed the border on day four rather than day eight of the invasion, their trucks and cars passing over a broad stone-built bridge spanning the river [B.]. The customs post was still in place, with its red and white hooped pole barrier fixed in the raised position, as if it were saluting the conquering army. The roadway was scored and cracked by the passage of Imperial tanks, and engineers, stripped to the waist and belly-deep in river water, were carrying out reinforcement work on the bridge piers and [spans].

Jan was shocked when he saw the first dead bodies of Russian soldiers lying where they had been killed: on roadways; in ditches; in the cabs of their trucks; hanging halfway out of their open cab doors, riddled with bullets; carbonised by fire in the turrets of their feeble, ancient tanks; shot in the back in waves as they fled across fields and streams; blown into pieces by overwhelmingly superior artillery; bombed and strafed in columns by Imperial fighter-bombers; executed in groups in yards and village squares half-glimpsed from Jan’s passing truck; dismembered and crushed and crushed again by convoys of trucks and tanks. What was shocking to Jan was not so much the violence and gore – that was horrible at first, but he found that he rapidly became desensitised to it – as the indignity and banality of all this death: so many bodies, killed and lying in such a variety of ways and postures, and yet each individual’s identity was lost, subsumed in the in the anonomysing crusts of dust and ash, and dehumanised by the ubiquity of the Russian’s brown uniforms and standard issue belts and equipment.

All the personality of these thousands of dead (and it must have been thousands that he saw on those first two days of travel through the burned countryside) had been erased in their mass death. Their humanity had disappeared as heat, rot, flies, vehicles and animals removed their flesh and they swelled and then shrank in their uniforms. Soon there would just be the stains of their rotted bodies and the remnants of their clothes and equipment. In some places, children poked at the bodies with sticks, twisting their faces into expressions of mock disgust, and then shrieking with fear and laughter when a piece of the body became dislodged or a belch of corpse gas was emitted.

[…]

The mobile bakery unit has arrived, and the smell of baking bread is drifting on the warm early summer evening air. It’s the evening of the fourth day of the invasion, and the unit is parked for the night on the verge of the main highway to [Smolensk proxy]. The Russian air force has been destroyed, so everyone has confidently lit fires for heating water and cooking.

Jan is leaning against the bonnet of Mechelen’s staff car, drawing patterns – circles and ‘M’s – in the dust that’s collected on the metal during the long cross-country drive. The metal is still hot from the engine, and he can smell oil and petrol.

Tuesday 20th – Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941

“This is where it all started,” says Mechelen, climbing out of the car and walking to the patch of roughly grassed earth next to the junction. “This is the actual spot.”

Jan slowly walks over and joins him, picking at long stalks of grass bowing under the weight of their own spring growth. The verges are full of wild flowers, and there’s a fertile smell of dung and sun-warmed earth in the air. Mechelen kicks at the earth with the toe of his boot and says, “Look here – see that black layer? That’s ash from where they burned down the customs post. And down this road here – ” – he nods towards the east – “ – is where the they massacred the refugees on the train.”
“Really? Here? Can we go and look at the site?”

“Of course. Let’s walk – it’s only a mile or so.”

The hedges are bright with green leaves. It seems incongruous to Jan that he could be here in the spring sunshine, with all the new growth and new life budding and bursting, and be walking towards the site of one of the most infamous atrocities of recent history. It feels unreal, like so much of his experience since he joined the war effort.
Mechelen says, “You know the story, I suppose? At least, the official one?”

“Well…only what I picked up from the official papers when I was abroad – which I suppose is what you mean?”

Mechelen nods. “Most of that was true. But there were quite a lot of things suppressed. It was a powerful propaganda tool, of course, having so many civilians killed by what were obviously Slav elements. But there were some things that were considered too shameful or embarrassing to release into the public domain. I was here, remember: our unit was called up to help police the scene afterwards.”

“Oh?” Jan feels privileged to be talking to someone who is so knowledgeable, and who speaks with such insight about military and political matters: Mechelen has a calm, measured, matter-of-fact tone that reeks of authority and authoritativeness.

But Jan also feels somehow childish when he talks to Mechelen: as well as being a good ten years younger than Mechelen, he senses that the older man talks on at least two levels – the surface, literal level, and another, more obscure level, where words have veiled meanings and dangle hooks that will snag you if you commit yourself to an answer too quickly, or say something that’s ill-considered or stupid. He also thinks that Mechelen can sense his nervousness and inferiority, and that he plays against that, asking difficult rhetorical questions that Jan can only contemplate silently, having insufficient knowledge to form a proper judgement. Mechelen will let the silence drag on for a bit before dropping the dead weight of his definitive opinion into the empty space.

[…]

Jan generally still feels nervous and jumpy still whenever he’s around the proper soldiers, aware that he is a comparative child amongst these grown up men who have fought their way across the continent for the motherland, west and east, in all seasons, while he sat in his office in the middle east, pushing paper and manipulating numbers. It makes him feel as if there is a great void inside him, as if he’s hollow. When the grizzled veterans speak to him, he fears that he will open his mouth in reply and only silent air will come out, revealing his vacancy and emptiness. His insubstantiality.

The void stretches out behind him too, a vast space of uncertainty and […]. A chance remark or question from one of the experienced soldiers opens up that whole reservoir of doubt and lets it flood into his heart, brain, and mouth, and he finds himself gulping air and stuttering.

[…]

“When the partisans blew the track and the train derailed,” Mechelen goes on, “our refugees’ escort party – who’d got onto the train at L_stadt, when formal [responsibility] was transferred – ran for it as soon as they came under fire when the partisans closed in. That was something that wasn’t made known.”

“What happened to them?”

“They arrived at the nearest police post on our side of the border and reported the train wreck. Then they were shipped back to their unit. When the truth emerged the officer and the NCOs were court martialled – and quite rightly.”

Mechelen nods to himself, then goes on.

“So the refugees were left to look after themselves. There were plenty of people killed and badly injured in the crash, and people made themselves busy getting people out of the wreckage and trying to make the injured comfortable. Meanwhile the partisans had surrounded the area and were closing their net.”

The road they’re walking along is narrowing significantly, climbing towards the hump-backed bridge ahead. Bright sunshine and glowing leaves hang above the rough stone walls of the bridge, and Jan can see insects veering and looping in the light.

When they get to the [apex] of the bridge, Mechelen points down into the cutting below.

“That’s where they corralled all the men after they’d separated them from the women and children. There were about a hundred and fifty men altogether – mostly of working age, but quite a few elderly grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The Slavs didn’t differentiate. They made all of the male refugees strip naked, and then they tortured them before they killed them. The torture story was released – and some photographs and moving pictures of the scene, as you may recall – but there was some horrible, bestial things that the Slavs did that were never made known, even though they had potential propaganda value.” Mechelen pauses again, slowly brushing dust and pollen from the flat-topped stones of the bridge wall.

“There’s always that balance to strike between showing the enemy up as the barbarians that they are, and the shame of our people knowing what they have done to our side – especially if it makes us look weak or inferior. But they did all sorts of things – male rape, all kinds of sick tortures and games. They made the men do all sorts of things. Horrible. And then they shot them all.”

“And you have to remember that I was here, not long after it all happened. The smell, and the flies. And all the survivors milling around, trying to find their men folk amongst the blood and the brains and the shit and the mess. Not very pretty, trying to help a wife recover her two children’s daddy’s body when he’s got half a tree branch shoved up his arse and out through his side. Those things stay with you, and you remember the women’s faces, and what they said. And their voices.”

Sunday 18th – Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941

The invasion is coming – it’s an open secret amongst all the men in the camp, and even the local townsfolk know: the build up of troops and fighting vehicles everywhere is so obvious. Jan concludes that if everyone on this side of the border can see what’s coming, then surely the Russian/Slav high command must be fully aware of the imminent threat. And yet there doesn’t seem to be any parallel build up of forces on the Russian side, and there’s nothing in the daily command briefings, nor in the news, that indicates any kind of diplomatic activity or tension. Jan finds the whole thing a little unreal that Spring, as the men drill and prepare assiduously for the extensive work schedule that will follow the forthcoming big push.

One morning in late April, when Jan’s head is still throbbing from the previous night’s habitual drinking, and when the unaccustomed ashy taste of a cigar is still lining his mouth, Mechelen knocks on his office door and says, “Let’s go for a little drive.”

Mechelen’s staff car is an overlong monster in silver grey, with sweeping wheel arches and polished bare metal trim. The driver is wearing soft grey gloves that move smoothly over the leather-covered steering wheel. With the metal-strutted fabric roof folded away, the open top of the car is wide and airy; it’s something like travelling in a boat, watching the trees and the hedges divide ahead of you and pass by on either side. Jan likes being driven.

Mechelen has the driver take them up to one of the border watch towers, all of which were built within the last eighteen months, since the borders were readjusted and agreed. The driver parks the car in the shade of the forest. As they climb up the bare wooden staircase to the watch tower’s observation platform, Jan uses the roughly finished wooden hand rail to help push him up, feeling the whole tower trembling gently as the men’s weight shifts on the stairs. He doesn’t want to grip the rail too tight, as it’s full of splinters and splits. The whole tower smells of creosote. The forest canopy is full of singing, flitting birds, and the sunlight is sieving through the leaves.

The border guard gives up his seat and lets them make use of the powerful, tripod-mounted field glasses. Mechelen surveys the scene for a few minutes, then waves Jan forward for his turn.

“Take a good look. We’ll be able to see much more of that side from ground level pretty soon, I think.”

“Is it soon, then, Major?”

“I think so, yes. Not long now. Eh, corporal?”

The border guard smiles and nods. The sunlight is reflecting off the window sills and glass, and shines clear and bright on his face and in his grey eyes, where it picks out the delicate details of his irises. In the eyepieces of the binoculars, Jan can see dark specks of dust, and tiny bubbles in the glass. The field glasses smell of rubber, and of skin-warmed metal. The optics drain the colour out of everything, leaving behind a dominant grey-blue cast.
He fingertips the knurled metal focus wheel, and the microscopic flaws disappear as he zooms in on the Russian watch tower on the other side of the hundred-metre-wide mown strip.

The Russian tower is even more rough-built than their own one: like some rickety tree house a child would make, with a plethora of amateur-looking buttresses and cross-bracings in the support structure. Jan wouldn’t fancy being atop that thing with two other adult weight people – especially if there was a wind blowing. There’s a figure in the Russian tower, but he’s on the far side of the platform, in shadow. It looks as if he’s making tea or something, and Jan can see steam or smoke rising in little billows.

Jan says, “He doesn’t seem too worried, does he?”

“No,” says Mechelen, “that’s exactly what I thought. It’s incredible that they can’t see what’s coming. If they had any intelligence at all they’d have twigged what’s going on, and they’d be stacking up these sectors with extra troops. Nothing, though.”

“Let’s hope that’s indicative of their fighting abilities. It’ll make things easier when we go over.”

“Indeed. I don’t think that they’re going to give us too much of a fight.”

Back in the car, Mechelen offers Jan a swig of brandy from his silver hip flask. The alcohol is warm and fruity.

Mechelen winds up the glass partition between them and the driver and says, “The orders have come through, by the way.”

“For the invasion?”

Mechelen nods. “Looks like everything is set. The twentieth of May. We’ve got another three weeks, and then we’ll be following the troops in on day three – other things being equal.”

Friday 16th – Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941

Later, winding his way back to his sleeping quarters in the administration block, Jan has to stop and re-orient himself. He stands there, frowning, swaying under the broad canopy of the sky, with all the stars glittering overhead, and moves his hands and points to remind himself of where all the buildings are and where he needs to go. After a while he steps out confidently, then stops and retraces his steps, and goes through the gesture-guidance ritual again. He laughs.

As he walks along the last, gravelled, path to the administration block (the little stones knocking him off balance periodically) he’s talking to himself quietly.

“This is it. This is the place. This is the war. I’m here now, with the men. Yes. This is it. Now I’m here. This is what I will do. What I’ll be doing. With the men. In the war. Yes. Uh-huh.”

Earlier, he’d noticed the point when he tipped over into being very drunk: he’d been standing at the bar, leaning in towards Mechelen, who was talking. Jan had felt his concentration waver, and Mechelen’s voice had been drowned out by a slow wash of white noise in Jan’s head, his fingertips had slipped off the edge of the bar, and he’d almost stumbled, standing still. He’d frowned, squinted, and pushed his face closer to Mechelen’s, trying to refocus on the words that were dribbling out of those moving lips.

“I really loved being in battle. Loved it. Loved it. Because it was a test, and it was thrilling – in a way that you can’t understand unless you’ve been in it. Despite the danger and all the metal flying and killing people, and the stink. In battle, you’re…more alive – unless you’re dead, ha ha. And everything’s important. That’s what you realise.”

He pauses, looking at Major Martens, knowing that, despite his nodding, he doesn’t understand what Mechelen is talking about. How could he?
“And I was bloody good at it. We were a superb unit, all through the whole Western campaign – every officer – ” – he gestures around the room – “and nearly every man. Nearly every man.” (His eyes unfocus for a few seconds, as if he’s thinking of something far away.)

“But now I’m doing this. And I’ll make sure I’m bloody good at this, too. And that my unit’s bloody good. The best. Barman!”

Two more schnapps.

Earlier, Jan noticed that none of the other officers lingered around Mechelen: they approached, bought or took a drink, spoke briefly, and then returned to their table or gaggle of comrades. Jan, without any friends or peers, was trapped in Mechelen’s magnetic field. Where else could he go?
“Policy, professionalism, commitment. That’s what it all rests upon.”

Jan nods queasily. The table lamps leave swirling tracks of light on his retinas. His gaze slides sideways. There are glass bowls on the bar, full of cut sausage and raw onion. The light above the bar glistens on the pulpy, sheened skin of the onion, and on the nuggets of fat embedded in the sausage chunks. He blows out his cheeks, looks somewhere else.

He’s made it to the administration block. The bricks are damp against his forehead when he rests it against the wall. He digs in his battledress pocket for the key.

“Come on, come on. You bastard. Remember what you’re here for. Bastard.”


The door squeaks open and closed, and he has to give it a couple of shoves before the lock clicks and engages properly.

In the darkness, not knowing where the light switch is, he stands for a while, waiting for the shapes of the room to resolve themselves out of the dusty murk that’s swirling in front of his eyes.

“Oh, Mariette. Why can’t you be here?”

[…]

Wednesday 14th – Jan and Mechelen – Spring/Summer 1941

Walking from Mechelen’s office to the mess over the damp spring grass, Jan took in the low barracks beyond the regular screen of aspens and the extensive motor pool – the dozens of trucks, armoured cars, motorcycles and staff cars parked amongst the trees beneath screens of netting and camouflage rags. Birds pecked at the replanted grass along the edges of the path, darting aside as the men approached, and skittering back as soon as they had passed.

Jan noticed that Mechelen walked with a strange limp, and he tried to surreptitiously analyse the older man’s gait as they walked. It seemed that Mechelen threw his right foot out to the side slightly as he stepped forward, swinging it back onto the straight in a gentle arc. Jan could see from Mechelen’s regular grimace that walking caused him some pain.

When Mechelen had said to Jan, “Fuck that, come and meet the boys,” Jan had envisaged meeting his new comrades in the same kind of officers’ mess that he’d grown used to during his diplomatic service: comfortable rush chairs, carpets, subtle light fittings, glass-topped tables, a bar backed by mirrors and suspended spirit glasses.

The ‘mess’ as [G_burg], however, was more like a Scout hut: the outside walls were clad in narrow, black-coated planks that looked like a fence, and the roof was of corrugated metal sheets. There were a few unopenable windows, all criss-crossed with anti-blast tape. Inside, once you pushed open the stiff door that scraped over the warped floor, it was like something you’d expect to find in some run-down dock area in one of the seedier ports at home – the smell of spilled beer, with an undertone of vomit barely concealed by the application of disinfectant. There are a few table lamps, but most of the light comes through the small windows, and it’s an inadequate white morning light that makes the space seem shadowy, cold and miserable. It’s a place that needs night and artificial light to make it seem closed and homely.

You sense that the rugs scattered on the floor would be damp with beer, and that they’d be imbued with a paste of much-crushed broken glass, ash, pretzel residue and spilled alcohol.

There was another odour that crept up on you as you approached the men sprawled in the unmatched collection of threadbare armchairs and sofas: a bitter smell of rotting carpet and floorboards, of grease and stale booze. It made Jan think of fear and unhappiness desperately drowned in alcohol, and of jobless people queuing outside bars at 10 AM, waiting for them to open. Habitual drinking that becomes its own self-fulfilling fuel.

“Boys, boys, this is Major Martens. Please make him welcome in the usual way. He’s going to be working with us for a while, coming along with us for the ride and doing some logistical surveys for the Economic Planning Ministry. That’s right, isn’t it Martens?” (Martens nods.) “So, please make him welcome in the usual way, eh?”

Mechelen elbow-guides Martens up to the wooden-topped bar, and the serving man pours them each a substantial glass of schnapps. It’s far more than Jan would ever pour himself, even late in the evening when he was already well-oiled and unconcerned about how he’s likely to feel in the morning. The rest of the officers raise their glasses, and toast him when Mechelen says, “Logistics!” and downs his schnapps in a single prolonged swallow. Even in the dim light, Jan can see that the skin of Mechelen’s throat is mottled and red, and that his shirt collar looks dirty and damp. He can smell how stale Mechelen smells. As the other officers gather round to shake Jan’s hand and ask him their banal, awkward questions of introduction, he senses the same staleness and alcohol-soaked resignation: there’s a uniformly unhealthy pallor to their skin, their eyes all seem shadowed, and their hands all have an unpleasant limp dampness when he shakes them. It’s rather like being surrounded and patted at by a collection of weedy ghosts.

He sips at the schnapps, the acrid alcohol sluicing down his throat, and he feels the space behind his eyes wavering and tightening as the booze takes effect; knows that he’s uncomfortable drinking at this time of day, knows that it will make him feel stupid; knows that he will feel pressurised by the need to keep up with the drinking pace of these men; knows that he won’t be strong enough to resist that pressure; knows that he will get a headache and feel awful later and in the morning. He wonders if there’s anything to eat that he can use to cushion the impact of the booze and help slow the pace. The next schnapps has already been poured.

[…]

(c. 800 words)

Monday 12th – The canals – Ivan’s summer and autumn (1940) and winter/spring (1941)

There’s hardly a cloud in the August afternoon sky. Lying on his back, Ivan tries to track the little white dots that seem to race across the surface of his eyes. When he closes his eyes, the lids glow bright pink against the sunlight, and the little white dots turn black. If he screws his eyes shut really tight, little stars and geometric patterns of light seem to spark in the darkness inside his head. Michael, Ivan’s new best friend, has what the doctors and grown ups call a ‘lazy eye’. Ivan thinks that this makes Michael somehow disreputable, and therefore a much more desirable friend to have.

It’s the left eye. Michael is lying to Ivan’s right on the grassy slope of the canal embankment, and Ivan turns his head, slowly, slowly, cranking his neck round as if the muscles were a geared machine, until he can just look over his bottom lids and see the side of Michael’s face. Michael has his eyes open, Ivan can see. Ivan holds his head in position, feeling the strain at the base of his neck. The thin, whippy grass stems re-erect themselves and tickle the back of his neck.

Marta is at Mrs [L]’s for her piano lesson. This time last year, Ivan would have felt miserable and lost when deprived of Marta’s company and guidance. Now, though, he welcomes the freedom, the opportunity to do what he wants to do, and to play with his friend. Michael understands him better than Marta does, and Michael seems more grown up than Ivan’s sister, too, even though Marta is four years older than the two boys. And Michael smells the same as Ivan, too: the smell of hair, cotton shirts, sweat, and the inside of hot shoes. Whereas Marta usually smells sweet and milky, an alien kind of smell that Ivan finds increasingly sickly and off-putting. It’s as if the Marta he used to know is being reworked, repainted in different colours that make her more artificial and distant. He finds that he doesn’t tell her so much these days. And when she knocks timidly and pushes his door open and asks if he wants to play, he more frequently finds that he wants to wrinkle his nose and say “no”. But he still says “yes,” and follows her up the corridor to the playroom, where he feels a resentful anger – vaguely targeted at Marta, but actually more generalised against the stupidity of the world – seething inside him like the hollow echo of a departing wave.

Michael says “Do you know where this canal goes?”

Ivan pushes himself up on his elbows, then raises himself into the fully sitting position. “No. Where? Do you?”

“My dad told me. The White Sea. Do you know where that is?”

“No.”

“Russia. The far north. It’s thousands of miles.”

“Mm. That’s a long way away.”

“And this canal goes all the way there. All the way to the sea that freezes right over in the winter.”

Ivan turns sideways towards Michael and picks at some grass stems.

Michael says, “And do you know where else?”

“Where else what?”

“Where this canal goes.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Kazakhstan.”

Ivan nods, says, “Mmm.”

“You don’t know where Kazakhstan is, do you?”

“No.”

“In the middle east. Where it’s all desert and mountains, and the sun shines like this all the time, the whole year. It never rains.”

“Mmm.”

“Think what it would be like to travel all that way on a boat, on this canal, from here. We could stow away and do that, today. Thousands of miles north, and thousands of miles south. All from where we are now. My dad said. And my mum said ‘what’s stopping you?’”

“Are you going to move away, then?” (He feels his heart beat faster as he says this, alarmed by the possibility that his friend might leave before he’s got to know him better.)

Michael is silent for a while. The blue sky ghosts in reflection across the surface of the opaque canal water.

Michael says, less assuredly than he was speaking before, and with sadness, “I think we might. I think my dad wants to go west. He says that’s where the money is.”
“ ‘Where the money is’?”


“Yes. I think we used to live in the west before. Before the war.”
“And there’s some money there?”

“I think so. I think there must be. Dad says the east will never be rich.”

Ivan’s grass stem pulling has cleared a little patch of dried earth. He digs a finger into a small crevice and wiggles it wider and deeper, feeling the old worm casts and chalky soil crumble, dry against his skin. He wonders how far he’d have to dig before he reached a live thing.

“How come the canal water doesn’t all dry up in the summer?” says Michael.

“Dunno.”

[continue, pick up the thing about the bargee who gives them presents all through the summer, and how Ivan and Michael eventually fall out after they exhaust their shallow joint interests…cf. Freddie L and Perry S at junior school, as our tastes changed…and still that sense of infinite possibility, and their child’s ignorance/distance from the fears and thoughts that must dominate the adults’ thinking…]

[Next…PICKING UP JAN AND MECHELEN AGAIN…]
Jan feels nervous and jumpy still, aware that he is a comparative child amongst these grown up men who have fought their way across the continent for the motherland, west and east, in all seasons, while he sat in his office in the middle east, pushing paper and manipulating numbers. It makes him feel as if there is a great void inside him, as if he’s hollow. When the grizzled veterans speak to him, he fears that he will open his mouth in reply and only silent air will come out, revealing his vacancy and emptiness. His insubstantiality.
The void stretches out behind him too, a vast space of uncertainty and […]. A chance remark or question from one of the experienced soldiers opens up that whole reservoir of doubt and lets it flood into his heart, brain, and mouth, and he finds himself gulping air and stuttering.

(c. 1050 words)

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Saturday 10th – Jan and Mechelen, Spring 1941

There has been, in my view, a brutalisation of many of the men as we have increased the pace of our operations, resulting in a loss of discipline and self-control, and an increase in the number of incidents of moral irresponsibility and depravity, such that they have almost become the norm in some units.

In the early days of the actions, when the actions themselves were relatively rare – certainly as compared to the schedule we are operating to now – there was time after each action for reflection and rest (as well as for carousing and alcohol-induced oblivion – many of the men found this a necessity, given the toughness of the work, and the need for hardened nerves). Now, there are three or four actions every week (we also have to travel some distance in trucks between actions), and there is far less time for the men to recover and recollect themselves after each operation. The effect on their nerves, and on their levels of fatigue is clearly detrimental: there are many cases of severe headaches, tiredness, stomach problems, back problems, nervous exhaustion and so on – all the usual symptoms and side effects of men who are being stretched too far. These nervous complaints, and the moral weaknesses that accompany them in the field, have been spreading like a contagious virus amongst our precious manpower, so that casual torture, cruelty and unsanctioned murder have become commonplace. Worse still, these kind of bestial instincts are increasingly attracting tacit official sanction, in the sense that they are now part of many units’ normal repertoire of operational behaviours, and in the sense that senior officers neither condemn nor forbid these kind of activities. The perpetrators of these casual acts of violence and brutality therefore assume that they are fully justified in the behaviour, since it is in line with the general principles of our ‘Slavic expulsion’ policy as well as being tacitly approved through the senior officers’ silence.

It’s ironic to recall an incident that happened early in the campaign, when we were garrisoned in G_berg. This incident occurred in late August. One evening in August, the Duty Officer received reports of shooting in the old town. I was dispatched with my unit to support the local police commander in his investigations.

The old town lay between the Church of St. Mary and the river, and was replete with gardens and treed avenues. There was also the site of a ruined castle on one of the grassy slopes above the river, complete with residual stone walls and a complex of ditches and ramparts. It was here that the shooting was apparently taking place. We arrived at the castle complex and could hear the shooting for ourselves: regular rifle fire, punctuated by other small arms discharges, and occasional automatic weapon fire. The automatic weapons were significant, since they suggested the presence of regular troops from our armed forces. And so it proved.

There were army regulars interspersed amongst the crowd of civilians and militia types who were assembled on the grass in the summer evening sunlight. The light was still glittering on the river, and on the metal railings on the bridge. Swallows were flying overhead, their wings and tails flicking as they darted here and there after the evening’s rich harvest of insects. There was another volley of rifle fire as I led my soldiers towards the crowd, who were in shirtsleeves and who were mainly facing away from us, towards the castle precincts at the far end of the grassed area. We pushed through the crowd, and saw that they were watching the execution of some Slavs: they were being lined up on the edge of the castle ditch and shot by a mixed group of civilians and our own regular troops (participating in this kind of unofficial action was against regulations, of course). Any Slavs who had survived the shooting were finished off in the ditch by men with automatic weapons and pistols. There were about a hundred and fifty Slavs sitting on the grass slope nearest the river, hands on their heads, awaiting their turn at the ditch.

As we watched, the next volley of rifle fire toppled the latest batch of ten Slavs into the ditch, and the crowd laughed and cheered and shouted its approval. Many of the crowd were drinking wine or beer or spirits from bottles, and some of the regular troops were also drinking alcohol. (This was not unusual in itself during the course of official actions, but it was obviously unseemly for our soldiers to be seen behaving in such a way alongside civilians and other irregular elements.) I also saw some of these regular troops handing their weapons to civilians and militia men so that they could participate in the shootings.

I approached the only regular NCO that I could see and asked him if there were any of his officers present. He told me that there were not. I told him to order his men to retrieve all of their weapons and report to me. When they had done so, I noted down the units, ranks and names of these twenty three soldiers so that I could report their behaviour to their senior commander. Subsequently there was a mass assembly of all local units (a few days after this unfortunate evening shooting incident), which was addressed by General T from the High Command. He reminded our soldiers of their duty to adhere to regulations, and to conform to the standards of behaviour that were becoming for professional soldiers. It was tempting, he acknowledged, to engage in these informal activities, but it was also essential that we maintain our discipline and our emotional distance from the local populations who were – understandably – keen to take their revenge on the people who had tormented and exploited them for so long. Any involvement in the kind of “wildness” witnessed in the castle precincts would was a “threat to good discipline and order”, and to the maintenance of the proper relations between the army and the local population. Any repeat of this behaviour would be viewed “extremely harshly” by the High Command.

When I think back to that incident, it seems like a hundred years ago.

(c. 1030 words)

Wednesday 7th – Marta and Ivan – Spring 1941

Marta has finished crying. She’s still sitting on the wicker chair, her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms hugging her knees; a tight bundle of spent misery. Her eyes are wide, saucery. She feels – or imagines that she feels – the surface of her eyes drying, stretching, gathering dust, and the corners and the reddened lids getting sore. She sniffs up a long cold sniff of snot.

Nobody cares about me. But I don’t care. I can be by myself. I don’t need them.

The breeze through the pale spring leaves abates for a moment, and the sound of the flowing stream rises up above the sussing of the leaf rustle. There are starlings in the trees, whistling and chuckling, voices as clear as the hill-pure water and as guttural as its gurgling.

She thinks of Ivan that last summer, remembers the sunlight water-reflected on his throat, and the feel of his puny muscles under her fingertips. Remembers the day he wet himself with uncontrollable hysterical laughter when she held him upside-down: the slow spread of the wee on the front of his shorts, the saturation and drip; his humiliation; and how he’d forgiven her, creeping into her room later when she sat on the bed weeping with confused shame over what she’d done and putting his little arms as far around her shoulders as they would reach and laying his chin against hers.
She starts, blinks. She can hear Ivan’s voice as he runs up the grassy path, shouting out her name. She wipes her nose, feels the involuntary tears itching at the back of her sore eyes.

[…]

Mechelen’s Diary. Spring 1941.

April 18th: It’s stopped raining at last. After three weeks. Everyone’s sick of it, and sick of the smell of wet feet and uniforms. And socks and battledress that never dries out properly. And mud, mud, mud. It makes the actions awful, all the mud, and the ground saturated so that the excavations are difficult and unstable. But we press on of course. Always heading further east, up to the newly agreed frontier. Another few weeks, we calculate, and the last of our criss-crossing journeys will be over. This territory will be Slav-free, and we can all relax. Have a well-earned rest. Most of the boys have maintained a marvellous spirit and outlook, despite the heaviness of our work and the sheer distances and amount of work. We’ve attended more than twenty actions in the last month, mostly as active participants (but sometimes just on cordon duty), and it has taken its toll on some. But our unit has held up the best of all, I believe.

In some units – and I have seen this myself at first hand – there has been a …coarsening of some men’s behaviour. There always were some men who took pleasure in this work – in every unit. But they were a very small minority, and their behaviour was a clear departure from the general standard. Clear aberrations. (I remember, for example, Sergeant M. in our third platoon, who took pleasure in humiliating and then beating any bespectacled men. Only bespectacled men. Who knows what past slight or humiliation of his own this drew on? I remember how, on one action, he lined up three naked, bespectacled men, one behind the other, and made as if to shoot each man, until each man had soiled himself. After this he did actually shoot them, killing all three by firing through the first man and into the second and third with his machine pistol. I saw this myself. As Colonel J. was also present and did nothing, I did not consider that it was my place to intervene.)

But, as I say, this was clearly aberrant behaviour. Most of the men have retained their discipline, self-control and decency throughout the campaign. I see this as a powerful tribute to our army’s training and fundamental discipline. To have been through so many difficult operations, both in simple combat and in the difficult pacification and partisan elimination actions, and to have remained fundamentally decent and honourable. This is a great achievement, in my belief.

But, as I say, this has changed somewhat in recent weeks – at least in my judgement.

(c. 700 words)

Tuesday 6th – Marta and Ivan – Spring 1941

Marta felt very close to Ivan that summer, and she loved him very much. In the late afternoon, when they’d grown tired of their dam building, and their calves, thighs and backs were aching from the constant leaning forward, they’d lain for a while on the lawn, the hot sun drying their skin and clothes. Weary, Marta had closed her eyes, and felt the cooler air from above the stream breathing across her face. Neither she nor Ivan said anything, but she could sense his presence there, as if she could feel the weight of his body impressing the grass with his shape. With one forearm resting on her own forehead, she stretched out her other arm and her fingertips brushed against Ivan’s soft bicep. She laid her fingers there, on the smooth skin, unable to tell if it was the beat of his blood or hers that she could feel.

[…]

In the autumn Marta’s family were invited to mark the success of the harvest in the traditional way. The [district’s major landowner] had a tiny chapel up in a small clearing up on the forest fringe, where a select few townspeople were invited to celebrate the successful getting in of the crops. The chapel was usually only opened three times a year (Easter, Harvest Festival and Christmas) – sometimes more if there was a significant death in the landowner’s family. Mama and papa were dressed in their most formal clothes, and mama’s vertiginous shoes were wholly unsuitable once she’d stepped out of the custard-coloured limousine and had to negotiate the rough path that led to the chapel [glade]. Her sharp heels skewered leaves and lichen, creating kebabs of organic matter that she paused periodically to unspike. Papa stood a few yards away while she did this, shaking his head and tutting.

White sunbursts were angling obliquely through the trees that morning, dazzling, air-/mist-catching, speaking of the end of the summer and the promise of autumn. Everything was crisp underfoot, and the leaf colours had a doomed, poignant intensity. There was a plaited [garland?] of blue cornflowers and wheat stalks woven around the chapel door, the patterns and colours neat and simple against the almost organic backdrop of ole, weathered stone and damp-faded wood. At the bottom of the door there were vertical, parallel scratches, as if an animal had been sharpening its claws there. Papa had to duck in under the arch.

The inside of the chapel smelt of damp, and of [acid?] mouse droppings. They squeezed into a tiny pew that rocked on its worn runners when they sat on it. Ivan, in his pale blue Scout uniform, stood by the altar with two other Scouts, each of them holding a flag with a significant emblem (country, district, landowning family) while the priest read the harvest blessing. The sunlight played on the frame of the small window behind the priest and dust drifted slowly through the rays. Marta watched Ivan’s flag pole sway and jerk as her brother tried to keep it upright and his arms tired as the service went on. He shifted his weight from foot to foot to try and find a comfortable position where there was no strain, and where he could rest his arms and balance the weight of the heavy wooden pole. Marta could see the strain on Ivan’s face: the unselfconscious frowns and grimaces as he tried to stave off the embarrassment of dropping the thing in the confines of the tiny chapel. As she shifted uncomfortably, willing Ivan’s struggle to be over, she could feel the faint dampness of the pew that had soaked through her cotton dress.

After the service, when the priest had shaken their hands as they filed shyly out, she and Ivan had raced each other back to the limousine. Ivan put on a final spurt of speed as they’d approached the big car, and she saw that there were little patches of sweat under his arms and at the small of his back. She hugged him and gripped him tight as they waited for mama and papa.

[How you can be too sensitive [badly phrased: what I mean is that the power of sympathy and compassion can be overwhelmingly powerful…those moments when you get completely possessed by an emotion, especially when it’s nostalgic/melancholy/plangent with anticipated loss/bitter sweetness/loss of love.]

(c. 700 words)

Sunday 4th – Marta and Ivan – Spring 1941

The days are warm enough for them to play outside now (though cardigans and long socks are still occasional necessities). Mama has told Marta to make sure that Ivan stays away from the rivers and streams: mama was already disapproving of their water play after last summer’s ruining of Marta’s dress, but she’s become even more insistent after the drowning of the two local boys during the winter rains.

Ivan doesn’t seem too worried by this restriction, however: whereas last year he and Marta had been quite close and had played together often in the woods and in the stream up at the summer house, this year he seems to be more interested in hanging around with other boys of his age, and in making small carts out of planks and pram wheels, with rope-made steering mechanisms, which the boys can then race around the waste ground near the old gas works. Mama doesn’t need to know that Marta and Ivan aren’t spending their days together.

So this fine spring morning, on her own again, Marta finds herself sitting on one of the wickerwork chairs on the summer house [verandah\stoop ?], looking out at the sun glistening on the green leaves, and wondering what she can do with herself. She can’t get used to the feeling of being on her own; she’s so used to having Ivan attached to her, and she’d grown accustomed to that push/pull dynamic of resentment/comfortable dependency. So long as Ivan was with her, her days and her moods had some sort of focus – primarily, her goal was to look after Ivan and keep him amused and entertained. On her own, she has all of the hours of the day available, and no single, clear purpose. [HER voice fades up] Left to herself, she doesn’t have any aim or driving force. She could do anything that she wanted to, but she doesn’t know what she wants to do. She doesn’t really want to do anything. She picks at the sharp end of a stick/strand/reed of wicker on the side of the chair, twanging at it with her thumbnail.

She doesn’t have any playmates of her own, which is very unfair. All the time that she’s spent looking after Ivan, for no thanks, and she has no reward. Just being here on her own. Invisible.

Nobody cares about me.

The sun shines down on the green leaves, and they vibrate and shimmer in the breeze. She starts to cry, and picks at the loose wicker until her finger is indented and sore.

Why can’t everything be like it was before? This is horrible.

[…last summer…]
Last summer, the day she ruined her dress, she and Ivan had played in and around the stream, and it had felt as if that day was a hundred hours long. The sun was high, shining down through the convoluted, twisted oaks that overhung the stream, picking out the colours of the moss and lichen in the branches that were constantly damp from the moist air above the stream – pale greens and greys, oranges and browns. Up to their knees in the flowing water as they built their dam, their ears absorbed the sounds the passage of the water made over the rocks and stones: the constant white noise of froth and flow, the gurgling, chuckling, and tinkling of water against the bank, over stones, through little channels and around tree roots and fallen branches – all those complex sounds, intermeshed and counterpointed.

Now and again Marta would find herself emerging from the dam-building zone of focus and intent, a heavy stone poised in her grip, and she would gaze at the stream, her focus flickering between the persistent, rippling patterns of light on the water’s moving surface and the fixed rocks and stones beneath – the constantly shifting play of paler light moving over the sandy stream bed, over the yellow-orange gravel, the grey and brown stones, and over the clumps of white, quartz-like rocks embedded there.

The light, amber tinged, rippling through the physical ripples and waves in the water, everything somehow staying in place, constant, despite the ceaseless change of the water and the light, and the coronas of light from fallen leaves and floating debris and weird, prismatic effects whose source she can’t identify. All flowing between her legs and around them, with Ivan moving at the periphery of vision, adding the latest chunk of masonry to their growing dam; the spray splashing on her bare arms, cold drops on her throat sometimes, and flung up inside the dress whose hem she has rolled up to keep it clear of the water.

All movement and flow, and yet constant. Each uncapturable moment merging into the next, creating a vivid memory state that holds together in her mind, an assembly of all these sensory patterns and fragments, vibrating there in the space behind her eyes – vivid, crisp, and ephemeral. As soon as she shifts her attention to the tiny bird dipping its needle-like beak into the water from its perch on a flat stone, all the rest of the scene retreats. The bird has its own constant motion – shifting its angle to keep its eyes on the move, the regular darts at the water, the vibration of wings and tail as the spray falls on it, and the aggressive whirr of wings as it takes flight in fright. Marta, disappointed that the bird – a fixed point of [focus/constancy/expectation] – has gone, finds that she’s still holding the large, smooth stone. She looks for a suitably shaped space to lay it down.

[building dams out of streambed rocks – the satisfaction of eventually damming the flow, of seeing the water rise against the barrier that they’d made – the thrill of creativity, of transforming the world and changing the shape of things; the sensual joy of having your feet in the water and the slimy mud, and the gradual piecing together of the barrier; the little disasters and set backs as a section gives way, the wet stones sliding and grating across each other, and them I+M struggling to stop the fall while keeping the rest of the structure in place, and the momentary blaming and falling out, soon subsumed by the re-immersion in the work; finding horrible things, and realising that you’ve squashed them in your fingers while you’ve been working; getting used to the slimy squashy things, getting inured to the way that they crack and squash and split – eventually, just getting back to concentrating on the construction effort; the glitter of sunlight on the water skipping over some miniature rapids further down the stream, which you notice when you pause for a breath, standing up and feeling the ache in your back, in the backs of your thighs and calves – and the salty, gritty sweat on your forehead, and the grit and dirt in your hair, where you’ve wiped away the sweat on your brow using a hand that’s muddy and sandy; the changing light as the sun slides down the sky, charting the passage of time; the sudden sense of chill as the sun dips down behind the high wooded slopes to the west, and you suddenly notice the breeze that’s been cooling you all day – now, you feel like it’s chilling you.

(c. 1200 words)

Saturday 3rd – Mechelen’s Diary/Memoir – February 1941

Davids refused to move elsewhere for our discussion, and he would not ask the militia leaders to leave either. Therefore I was presented with the choice between, on the one hand, the humiliation of criticising a fellow officer in front of civilians and, on the other, leaving without making my point. Since we were so recently come to this country, and our reputation was not yet established, I chose the latter course of action: I did not wish these foreigners to gain the impression that we could be disunited, nor let them see that an officer of my country’s army could allow his men to participate in reprehensible acts.

When I re-emerged into the grey winter light in the courtyard, the situation had at least calmed. The civilians were all gone, and now only full-time soldiers remained – plus the corpses and the live, naked prisoners. I spoke to some of these battered, frightened men through our interpreter: apparently they had been officials and administrators in the town government – clerks and desk wallahs, from what I could understand – and they had been ‘arrested’ by the militia because of their close relationship with the former authorities; already this was being referred to as ‘collaboration’, even though the whole population had lived under the same government and served the same masters. It was amazing how quickly these populations could find clear lines of differentiation once the unifying power of an oppressive government had been removed: demarcations of race, social status, and nationalism emerged and were acted upon, [more on this, more subtly – reify] often with an atavistic viciousness that shocked my soldiers, who couldn’t understand such visceral hatred [how theirs was a more politically-/intellectually-driven antipathy – policy rather than gut feeling]. These men were being held illegally, without charge, in the official prison, in a building that supposedly represented the authority of the state and the legitimacy of the law.

I decided that it would be prudent to demonstrate to the population, immediately, that we were an occupying force that recognised the rule of law, and which would not merely do things because they were expedient.

I ordered that the prisoners were found clothes and boots, and that the public were allowed back into the courtyard. I assembled the (now clothed) prisoners behind the tangle of corpses on the cobbles, then mounted a staircase and addressed the crowd through a megaphone. I told them that these men were being freed; that they had committed no crime; that denunciation was no basis for detention; and that the dead men in the courtyard had been unlawfully killed. Doubtless there would be a criminal investigation in the near future to try and determine the identities of the perpetrators. Then we let the prisoners go (the ones who were fit enough – the man who’d lost his eye, and two other men, had been taken to the hospital). The freed prisoners walked gingerly towards the main exit gate, warily looking at the crowds lining the walks: two hours ago these same people would willingly have beaten them to death.

And then it was over. Night was falling already, and we were driven back to barracks, each driver following the tiny red bulb on the tailboard of the truck in front.

On the journey back to barracks my anger became tempered by a cooler desire to take the correct approach to this situation: I would make sure that everything was done properly, and not allow my personal disdain for Davids to skew my strategy. I realised that I did not really have enough evidence with which to approach our senior commander, and so I determined that I would wait until I had a firmer case.

{[Memoir form, not diary…?] Nevertheless, the incident at the bastion was indicative of the dangers that the conduct of the war posed to our men’s discipline and morale. These dangers became increasingly apparent as the local populations took their opportunity to revenge themselves on collaborators, on their former neighbours, and on the ‘parasitic Slavs’ that had been undermining their economy and exploiting the more trusting, honest and gullible [‘Caucasian’] citizens.}

Diary entry, March 3rd 1941:
Newly arrived in the city of [F]. From 0430 to 0800 at the railway station, overseeing unloading of Company vehicles. Usual crowd of gawking civilians at the railings. Crowd the usual mixture of children, idiot men of all ages, and women with ragged clothes and dirty faces. I suppose this at least means that the productive citizens are back in their workplaces. Everyday normality returns very swiftly after the steamroller of war moves along. One of my men (Corporal G., from the third platoon) was badly run over when a truck rolled off one of the rail cars. The brakes had not been securely applied, and no wheel chocks had been used. I have instigated an investigation to determine who was responsible, and then I will instigate disciplinary action. (Corporal G., I have learnt, has died at the hospital. Such stupidity and incompetence.)

March 1oth: Very spring-like here today! Early morning inspection tour of barracks by General M – everything ‘extremely satisfactory, extremely’ (as he always says). Davids fawned quite disgustingly: his smiling face was never more than four feet away from the General’s. It made me feel rather ill at first, but gradually his sycophancy became so obvious and comical that I could only laugh. Shameless.
Very spring-like. White cumulus clouds against a blue sky, and a warmer breeze blowing across the parade square. Noticable that there are more birds singing. A stork nest on a (dead) factory chimney on the other side of the perimeter fence, and I saw some deer at the forest fringe over there. Makes me long for home, and for my darling K. I have been thinking about her often since we arrived, and still await her first letter. (Incidentally, I still can’t quite believe what has happened: that I have met someone like K., and that she has loved me so deeply and tenderly. While I await her letter, and the resumption of our contact, it makes the whole episode seem unreal, as if it happened to someone else. I know that as soon as I see her handwriting on the envelope everything will become real and colourful again.)

Superb rabbit stew from the cook this evening, with local vegetables. No alcohol due to action in the morning. I will be in bed by 10.
March 11th: Action today, consolidating villages in the B-W district. Usual intensity of feeling and range of performance from the men. Started round up at dawn, but action proper started rather late due to transport shortfall (another logistical triumph on the part of the HQ staff). Called a halt at dusk, when remaining detainees (about 500) were dispatched to a local warehouse for overnight storage. Second unit to complete action in the morning.

Excellent brandy and champagne in the mess this evening – drank my share, and I am feeling rather tired. Wish that I could talk to K and tell her how I feel about her. Composed a letter to her but tore it up as it didn’t express what I meant to say. There’s so much I feel and want to tell her, but when I try and put it into words it all becomes tangled up and ridiculous. It’s like I need to be able to write three parallel lines all at once, which she can read together; that would be the way to get her to understand all the things I feel, expressed in the correct way. K, K. Damn, I love that woman. But the whole situation seems impossible. She is so far away and everything is impractical. I will write her another letter in the morning, when I am sober and can think properly.

There was a strange, striking moment during the action today. It happened in the evening, when everything was finished, and we were just tidying up after the detainees had been dispatched to the factory warehouse for the night. The breeze was blowing, but it was still warm. The spring leaves on the trees were whispering in the dusk, as if the trees were talking to each other, and the evening sky had a hint of violet in the whitish blue. It was a very beautiful moment. I thought I could hear water chuckling, like water flowing in a culvert after heavy rain. I stopped and stood very still, with my eyes half closed. Just listening. The sound seemed to grow louder – it was puzzling. Then everything switched – like those illusory pictures that can be a rabbit or a duck, but never both at the same time – and I realised that it was the sound of horseshoes on the road.

It was strange to hear that sound after the work that we had been doing all day. Surreal. The echo and clap of the hooves on the metalled road, the sound coming and going between the tree trunks. Everyone had stopped what they were doing, resting on the handles of their shovels or leaning against the side of a truck.

The horse broke out into the open. It was a pale grey animal that looked ghostly in the fading light, and it was pulling a light-coloured carriage behind it. As the carriage got nearer I could see that a militia man was sitting in the driver’s position, holding the whip and reins uncomfortably, and looking frightened. He hauled back on the reins as he approached us, and the horse pulled up, snorting and complaining at this inexpert treatment.

The driver said “Two more for you,” and tapped on the roof with the whip.
“We’re finished for the day,” I said, “no more business today.”
“That’s nothing to do with me,” said the driver, “I was told to bring them to you. Quite important people, I think.”
“Oh? Oh well, then, let’s have a look.”

One of my NCOs opened up the door and stuck his head inside. I heard him ask some questions, and then he stepped back and pulled down the collapsible steps beneath the doorway. He held out his hand and an elderly man leant on the NCO’s arm as he descended the steps, his walking stick hooked over his free arm. A woman followed him She was about ten years the old man’s junior, and you could tell that she had been very beautiful – in fact, she still was. She was carrying a towel and a small toilet bag. The old man was wearing a pale-coloured linen suit and a straw hat. She wore a long linen dress, bunched in at the waist, and a light-coloured woollen jacket. The pair of them might have been on their way to a summer picnic. They looked at us, confused.

“Excuse me, but where are we to go now?” asked the old man, looking at me. His wife – I presume she was his wife – had taken his arm, in a way that was both supportive to him and reassuring to herself.

I looked at my NCO and raised my eyebrows. He nodded.

“Please go along with my Sergeant here – he will show you the way.”

I watched as the three of them, followed by a couple of soldiers with rifles, disappeared into the gloom of the forest. The old couple’s [pale] clothes left ghostly after images, and it was hard to distinguish where the shadows ended and the people started.

The militia man had disappeared. I wondered what the fuck we were going to do with this horse and carriage.

(c. 1940 words)

Thursday 1st December: Mechelen’s Diary – February 1941

Davids’ unit (as well as my own) was part of the follow-up force that assisted in the final stages of the pacification of the town of L., once the enemy troop line had been pushed back 10 kilometres beyond the city boundary. Residual combat forces had remained in the town to secure the essential bridges, thoroughfares and buildings. However, there was still much wild activity and looting, especially in respect of the local militias and irregular groupings that had either formed ‘spontaneously’ after the Slav retreat, or who had been drawn to the area after hearing of the town’s liberation.

The town was overhung with the smoke from many fires, and as we drove into the town along the winter-hardened road (there was very little snow still lying, fortunately) I could smell that there were buildings burning (there’s a very distinctive smell of burning timber, dust and hot roof tiles), and the chemical-rich smell of burning factories, and the smell of burning people. There were dead Slav soldiers still lying where they had fallen in the streets – a surprisingly large number, I thought. The ethnic Westerners were gathered in the streets in knots and larger groups – all ages, and men, women and children – all wrapped in their winter clothes and hats, and seemingly enjoying a kind of party atmosphere. They were helping themselves to the contents of the shops with names in Slavic script – food, clothing, pots and pans, samovars, anything they could carry. I remember seeing two young women push-pulling an upright piano balanced on a tiny cart along a cobbled street. They stopped to rest (they were sweating despite the cold), and our truck went past them. One of these girls was very attractive, her face made up prettily, and her black hair emerging in a crisp curve from under her woollen hat. On the cobble behind where she was standing there was a dead Slav soldier collapsed like a broken scarecrow, missing his head. The girls didn’t seem to notice that he was there. They held their piano steady with one hand each and waved to us with the other.

In the main square we had to wait while some policemen cleared a path for the trucks through the dense crowd. (I say ‘policemen’, but they were merely civilians in dark suits; they had improvised white cloth armbands bearing a small national flag emblem, and antique-looking rifles slung over their shoulders. They were shouting more than regular policemen would do, and gesticulating in an extravagant manner. I suspect that many of them were drunk.) The town’s real policemen – former Slav collaborators and hirelings – were all being held in their own jail, in the basement of the town bastion.

We arrived at the bastion – a squat structure in dirty yellow stone blackened with soot and bird shit – and had to wait again while a crowd was dispersed. In the courtyard there was a cordon of militiamen and, beyond them on the cobbles, perhaps fifty bodies of policemen who had apparently been beaten to death (there were bloodstained pickaxe handles and iron bars on the ground, which children were poking at – some of the older, braver children were picking these weapons up and wielding them in imitation of the adults who had done the brutal killing. It seemed improper to me that these children were here, and that there was a milling group of onlookers peering at the bodies: it was all woefully uncontrolled and ad hoc. Colonel Davids’ men, all the while, were standing around watching what was going on, but making no intervention of any kind – merely smoking cigarettes, talking to each other and pointing things out, and laughing.

While we stood looking, there was a commotion near one of the bastion’s internal gates: another squad of militiamen were making a group of what turned out to be collaborators run the gauntlet: the militiamen made a tunnel that the naked collaborators had to run through while punches and kicks rained in on them. I saw one man have his eye put out: he put his hand over it as it rested there on his bloody cheek, and held up his other arm to try and protect himself. These men too would have been killed in this orgy of mob violence if we had not intervened.

I approached one of Davids’ NCOs, a good man who I had fought with in Poland. I asked him where his Colonel was, and what orders his men had been given. It turned out that they had had no orders. The Colonel was inside the bastion with the militia commanders. I instructed my senior Lieutenant to clear the courtyard of all civilians, close the gate, and take the naked men into custody.

The bastion’s interior was very well-decorated, with much wood panelling and decorative plaster work. The corridors were carpeted, and elegant electric lights lined the walls. I found Colonel Davids in one of the upstairs rooms, drinking brandy with three militia leaders, one of whom was sitting with his boots on an enormous oak council table; he had a machine gun clutched against his chest. I asked Colonel Davids if he and I could speak together in private.

c. 870 words