Blood of the Wolf by Graham Hurley

Author:Graham Hurley [Hurley, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spoils of War
ISBN: 9781788547536
Publisher: Head of Zeus

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In the second week of September, the first frost. Nehmann emerged from his tent, feeling the chill and the crispness of the grass beneath his feet. He’d talked to enough veterans by now, men who’d struggled through the previous winter, to know exactly what lay in wait. The fast-melting frost was nature’s down payment on the months to come. The wind from the east was blowing the remains of the summer’s dust and chaff across the airfield. It would get far, far, colder.

And it did. On 17 September, the temperature suddenly plunged. Nehmann awoke at dawn. He was still alone in the tent. He’d already helped himself to the blanket folded on the next bed but now, shivering, he struggled out to lay hands on a third. Back in bed, he drew his knees up to his chest, his hands between his thighs, desperate to conserve every particle of warmth. He’d tried to sleep like this as a kid in Svengati, with the cold sluicing off the mountains, but it had been January then, the very depths of winter, while here on the steppe it was still autumn.

Last night he’d been summoned to the Generaloberst’s command tent. Richthofen himself wasn’t there but Messner, barely raising his head from the usual pile of paperwork, had told him that there might be a possibility of Nehmann making it into the city. Supply flights to the forward airfield at Pitomnik were scheduled throughout the day and Messner himself would be piloting one of them. Weather permitting, Nehmann was welcome to come along.

Nehmann had asked him what he’d be carrying.

‘Food, fuel, letters from home, plus the man from the Promi,’ Messner muttered. ‘What else could a soldier possibly want?’

Back in his tent, the temperature already below zero, Nehmann had wondered what might be lying in wait for him among the ruins of the city. He talked to returning bomber crews every day. They were in the air for as long as six hours, sortie after sortie, clambering down from their aircraft for a snatched meal and a brief check of the maps and air recce photos waiting in the operations tent. Bombing specific targets, they told him, was like bombing in the dark. There was smoke everywhere from burning oil tanks, thick, viscous. The stuff penetrated the aircraft itself, catching in the back of the throat, insidious, evil, and getting even a glimpse of anything on the ground was impossible. The only thing worse than flying through shit like that, said one pilot, would be trying to survive underneath it.

Messner appeared shortly after eight. He stood in the entrance to the tent, stamping warmth back into his feet. He had an armful of clothing which he tossed at Nehmann.

‘Put this stuff on.’ His breath clouded in the icy air. ‘It’s been through the treatment.’

The clothing was Russian. It smelled of shag tobacco and the powder used for de-lousing. Nehmann knew Wehrmacht veterans who swore by this kit. They said the Russians didn’t skimp on woollen serge.

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