Watch on the Rhine lota-7 Page 7

  That the girls turned out to watch, more often than not, didn’t hurt matters any.

  Yet the nights and days remained long. Soldiers were killed in training and their places taken by new faces. The old German army had thought that one percent killed in basic training was not merely an acceptable, but a desirable figure. The new-old German Army did as well, this portion of it, at least.

  That rarely happened in the regular Bundeswehr. There, the few Wehrmacht veterans scattered about were impotent to change things from the politically correct, multiculturally sensitive stew the politicians had made of the German army.

  Only in the 47th Panzer Korps, called by political friend and foe alike, “the SS Korps,” were there enough men who knew the old ways — knew them, and more importantly, were willing to tell the politicians and social theorists to “go fuck yourselves” over them — to meld their new charges into what Germany, what Europe, what humanity, needed.

  And so the boys marched with pride and a spring, knowing that, perhaps alone among their people’s defenders they could and would do the job at hand.

  Was it this that the girls of the towns had seen? Was it that they had seen one group of defenders whom they could be sure would never leave them defenseless until death stopped them?

  The boys didn’t know.

  “I just know I get laid a lot more than I used to,” laughed the irrepressible Harz, just before something attracted his attention.

  It began as a low rumble in the air. Soon, the boys were hustling out of their tents in fear of an earthquake.

  “What the fuck is it?” asked Harz of Schultz.

  Dieter just shook his head, equally uncomprehending.

  “Over there!” shouted another of the boys. “It’s a tank. Nothing much.”

  Schultz looked and saw an iron beast cresting a hill. Yes, just another tank. Nothing special. They worked with tanks all the time. And then, as the tank drew closer and the rumbling stronger, his eyes made out a tiny something, projecting from the top of the turret.

  “Liebe Gott im Himmel!”[24]

  From atop the Tiger III, as if on parade… as if on parade before a universe he personally owned, Hans Brasche, late of 5th SS Panzer Division (Wiking), tossed a crisp salute at his future tank crews.

  Interlude

  As was fitting for a junior Kessentai, Ro’moloristen took an obscure position towards the back of the oddly designed, auditoriumlike, assembly room. The floor, to the extent an Aldenata-based ship could be said to have permanent floors, swept upward as it swept back, allowing the young Kessentai a full view of the assembling God Kings and the central raised dais against the far wall.

  While himself relegated to the rear by his junior position, the young God King’s betters — elders, in any case — took more prominent positions towards the front. Centered at the very front, right against the cleared semicircular area that had been left around the raised dais, stood Athenalras, armed crossed before the massive equine chest in the posture of supplication and serenity.

  The thousands of other God Kings present in the auditorium likewise matched Athenalras’ pious posture as an elderly Posleen, a Kenstain — Bin’ar’rastemon — a once prominent Kessentai who had given up the Path to become a very special form of Kessenalt. No mere castellaine was Bin’ar’rastemon, no mere steward for another God King. Once the toll of years and wounds had begun to tell, he had turned his clan and its assets over to his senior eson’antai, or son, only keeping control of sufficient to support himself in a modest style as he entered the Way of Remembrance.

  Something between historians and chaplains, the Kessenalt of the Way of Remembrance served to maintain and remind the People of their history, their values, their beliefs… and the very nasty way of the world unwittingly inflicted upon them by the Aldenata and their one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter, philosophy.

  Clad in ceremonial harness of pure heavy metal, Bin’ar’rastemon — old and with the Posleen equivalent of arthritis creaking every joint — ambled up the steps of the dais, ancient scrolls tucked into his harness.

  Though Kenstain normally received little respect as a class, except perhaps from the God Kings they served directly, the followers of the Way of Remembrance were widely and highly valued. As Bin’ar’rastemon centered himself upon the dais, he ceremonially greeted the assembled God Kings, who ceremoniously answered, “Tell us, Rememberer, of the ways of the past, that we might know the ways of the future.”

  Bin’ar’rastemon unrolled a scroll formally, placing it upon a frail-seeming podium. On this he placed a hand. Yet he was a Rememberer, still in full possession of his mind, however much his body may have aged. In any case, he needed no scroll for this tale.

  “From the Book of the Knowers,” he began…

  Chapter 4

  Sennelager, Germany, 14 July 2005

  The base had been chosen for the assembly of the 47th Panzer Korps because of its central location. From all over Germany’s hundreds of small Kasernen, new, old and refurbished, poured in the thousands of newly trained troops and their veteran cadres.

  Convenient for assembly of a large Korps as it might have been, the base was also too close to Hamburg, too close to Berlin, too close to Essen and Frankfurt for comfort. Another way of saying this was that it was altogether too comfortable and easy for the left of center of German politics, at least of that part which answered to those leaders of the left who had secretly sold out to the Elves, to find their way to the place.

  And they did. In their thousands… in their tens of thousands.

  “Must be fifty thousand of the bastards,” muttered Mühlenkampf, standing at his office window overlooking the main gate to the Kaserne. “Where the hell did they all come from? And why aren’t the boys out there in the army instead? Why aren’t the damned girls in the army, for that matter?”

  He knew the answer, of course. Despite the threat of the Posleen, the idea of alternative service was too deeply ingrained in German political and social culture even for the threat of annihilation to overcome fully. Curiously, Great Britain and the United States, without a long or stable tradition of peacetime conscription or “compulsory social service,” had done better by far in dragging in their young people. There, the old age homes and the like had never become dependent on low-paid slave labor. Private always — or at least not fully governmental, they could remain so. In Germany? No such luck.

  Wherever the protestors had come from, there was little doubt where they intended to go. Mühlenkampf watched without the slightest trace of amusement as the protestors, forming a human phalanx, made their first, barely repulsed, effort at storming the gate. He was even less amused to see a protest sign — “Friendship to our alien brothers,” said the sign — come smashing down across the head and shoulders of a policeman.

  From the desk behind the general came the ringing of a telephone. He turned his eyes away from the protest to answer the nagging device. “Mühlenkampf,” he announced.

  The chancellor’s voice came from the receiver. Though still unused to modern conveniences the sound seemed distant, and a bit muffled. A speakerphone, the general guessed, uncertainly.

  “This is the chancellor. I have Günter sitting here with me in my office and listening. What is your situation, General?”

  “My situation? I have forty or fifty thousand protestors outside my installation. Half of them are unwashed, long-haired young men who ought to be in the army and are not. They are storming the gates even as we speak. And the local police cannot hold them.”

  There was a brief silence from the other end before the chancellor resumed. “I have two battalions of special riot control police en route to you by bus. They should be there in two hours at most.”

  Unseen by the chancellor, Mühlenkampf shook his head. “That will be far too late. For that matter it would be far too little even if they were here now.”

  “It is all I have, General.”

  Absently, the old SS man said, “I have more. I
have a half-strength armored Korps.”

  A new voice spoke up, a voice tinged with rage. It was Günter’s, Mühlenkampf was quite certain, despite the distortion. “SS man, you may not use your Korps on those civilians; the public relations aspects would be disastrous.”

  Holding in a snarl, the general decided to try a different tack. “Excuse me, Herr Kanzler. There seems to be some distortion in this connection. I can’t make out what you are saying. Did Günter say something? I will hang up and try again.”

  Replacing the receiver, Mühlenkampf shouted out to his secretary, “Lucy, the Kanzler or perhaps some other flunkies are going to be calling here again in moments. Make all the lines busy, would you? And send someone to bring me my division and brigade commanders.”

  Berlin, Germany, 14 June 2005

  The Tir’s group of human underlings sat again in a semicircle before the desk. The Tir’s eyes were closed, though his ears were open. His breathing was shallow but steady. His lips moved in a mantra in his own tongue.

  “All is in readiness,” said Dunkel, the Red. “Not less than fifty thousand protesters are converging on the base at Sennelager to combat the Fascists.”

  “The army has no objections to this,” announced the one gray-uniformed human present, a representative of certain elements in the General Staff. “Even if some portions objected to the trashing of our own bases, virtually no one wants these hideous SS men to remain in uniform.”

  Günter, the Green, sat silently for a while. “We have our people there as well, at least sixty percent of the protesters are Green.”

  The Tir, eyes still closed and breathing still shallow, said in a strained voice, “You have all done well. There will be rewards for good performance…”

  Sennelager, Germany, 14 June 2005

  A helmeted Dieter Schulz, now rewarded for his talents by sporting the insignia of a Stabsunteroffizier — a staff sergeant — and Rudi Harz, a sergeant himself, formed their troops in ranks before taking their places to the right.

  “What’s going on Dieter?” asked Harz.

  “No clue, Rudi. Maybe we are going to celebrate Bastille Day.”

  Harz snorted. “Somehow, I think not. Not with the orders being to wear helmets and gas masks, and to carry clubs.”

  “Should we ask Krueger?” queried Schultz, in a whisper. “I hate asking that bastard anything.”

  Krueger — now sergeant major of the headquarters detachment of Schwere Panzer Abteilung, heavy tank battalion, 501 — heard both his name and the word “bastard” whispered despite the distance between himself and the boys. He assumed that “bastard” could refer only to himself and smiled at the knowledge.

  Standing in front of the detachment, Krueger turned his head over one shoulder and announced, “We’re going to bust some fucking heads, Knaben.[25] That is all you need to know.”

  In front of the formation, thirteen blocks of twenty or twenty-one men — all that had been trained so far — plus a larger block to the left composing the service support detachment, the adjutant called the unit to attention. The men stiffened.

  Brasche strode out. He, like the boys, was dressed in field gray. The more modern camouflage pattern, not one whit more effective against Posleen visual rods, was in short supply. It mattered little, in any case. Brasche and the rest of the Korps’ cadre were more comfortable in field gray than they ever would have been in the kaleidoscope of color that was more modern German battle dress.

  There was an exchange of salutes. The adjutant moved to one side and marched to a position behind Brasche.

  Hans was short, curt even, in his speech. The duty ahead promised to be unpleasant and, while he would perform that duty, he had little genuine enthusiasm. “Boys, there are some people outside the main gate trying to break in and trash our little home away from home. On my command, you will don your protective masks. This is so that the newspapers and television and, incidentally, the legal system cannot identify you by face. Then we will march singing — singing the “Panzerlied” — to the main gate. If they go away when we do this, so much the better.

  “But if they do not, we are going to put them, as many of them as possible, into the hospital.”

  Schultz distinctly heard Krueger chortle with unrepressed glee. He thought, but could not be quite sure, that he heard a whispered, “Just like the good old days.”

  Brasche bellowed a command which was echoed down the ranks. The men fumbled with gas masks. These now — since the Posleen war — had gone largely obsolete, the Posleen being quite immune to any terrestrial war gas. Indeed, the only reason the men had even been issued and trained on masks was that the German chemical industry, working in close cooperation with the Russians, believed that a militarily useful toxin might someday be developed from the venom of the grat, a wasplike pest of the Posleen.

  At another command the men ported their makeshift clubs. Still another and the battalion faced to the right. A last command and they began to march down the cobblestones towards the main gate to the Kaserne.

  No command was required to begin the singing.

  * * *

  “Ob’s stürmt oder schneit, ob die Sonne uns lacht

  Der Tag glühend heiss oder eiskalt die Nacht…”[26]

  Though muffled by the masks, the sound of tens of thousands of throats belting out the German Army’s — be it called Reichswehr, Wehrmacht, SS or Bundeswehr — traditional song for its armored forces made the woods and the stones of the barracks ring.

  So deeply involved were they in the process of trying to force the Kaserne’s gate that the foremost ranks of the rioters scarcely noticed the approach of the Korps. Indeed, the sounds of smashing signs and grunting, struggling men and women quite drowned out the marching song for those nearest to the struggle. Not one of those rioters saw any incongruity in the fact that the signs bore slogans such as “Peace Now” and “Don’t Grease the Wheels of the War Machine.” Not one marcher found anything amiss in the attempt to sabotage the training of men who would save the Earth, if they could, from the Posleen who would destroy it. The protesters simply refused to acknowledge that the Posleen were any threat. Many of them refused even to acknowledge that the aliens existed.

  Back a distance, watching the struggle but taking no part in it, sat a reasonably well doped-up Andreas Schüler. Tall, thin, not too recently washed, Schüler wasn’t here because he cared about “saving” the Earth. He wasn’t here because he really objected to the army, except that in his own very personal way he had once objected to finding himself in the army and had instead done his “social year” in an infinitely more comfortable nursing home.

  Andreas had no great objection even to the 47th Panzer Korps. He, frankly, didn’t care that that Korps was in everything but name a resurrection of the dreaded SS. Indeed, in his younger days he had once flirted with the skinheads, though he had found no satisfaction in the movement.

  Schüler had come — as he had come every time the German left had massed to break and demoralize another part of the army — for the dope, the girls, and the visual spectacle. He was by no means alone in this.

  The spectacle had amused for a while, but then it had paled. Everything pales, in time. He recalled laughing as he watched a few protestors paint bright silver Sigrunen, SS, on the window of a Bundeswehr recruiting station. The marching crowd had laughed with him.

  Even so, Schüler could not feel a part of the amorphous mass of humanity in whose march from the train station he had taken part. There had been singing on that march… but the singing failed to move him.

  Despite the struggle at the gate, Schüler, like hundreds of others nearby, found himself more involved in conversation with the opposite sex than in any apparent cause.

  But then he heard. And then, from his high perch, he saw.

  * * *

  From all corners of the Kaserne poured in gray-clad men at a steady, even a stately, pace. The boots resounded on the pavement, audible at hundreds of meters. Noncoms kept order, aut
omatically interweaving the columns while still keeping units and ranks largely together. It was a spectacle not seen in Germany in many years.

  The marching men sang:

  “Bestaubt sind die Gesichter, doch froh ist unser Sinn, ja unser Sinn,

  Es braust unser Panzer, im Stürmwind dahin…”[27]

  At the point of the column, the tip of the spear, Brasche marched followed by Krueger — personally, then the 501st Heavy Tank Battalion’s headquarters, and the rest of the battalion. Behind the battalion came the first elements of the foundation of Wiking Division, followed themselves by Hohenstauffen, Frundsberg, and the rest.

  Mühlenkampf still remained at his office, though he had gone outside to stand on a stone porch to review the passing ranks. The command, “Augen… Rechts” — Eyes, Right — rang out as each company passed its Korps commander.

  Dieter’s eyes snapped back to the front on command. Up ahead, past the Nazi — Krueger — he saw Brasche walking erect and, seemingly, proud. Unlike his followers, Brasche strode unarmed; his fists would do well enough. From the subtle twisting of his commander’s mask, Dieter was certain Brasche was singing along with the rest. Past the battalion commander the last of the local police could be seen, falling, bloody and bruised, under the smashing signs of the pacifists, and — less incongruously — of the Reds and Greens.

  * * *

  Schüler stood, mesmerized, while watching the very first man leading the field-gray-clad mass of troops smash into the protestors. That man had marched alone and out front. Though that soldier went down fairly quickly — a matter of less than a minute, the boy could not help but be impressed by the sheer ferocity with which he had fought.