Return to Berlin by Noel Hynd

Author:Noel Hynd [Hynd, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Bern to Berlin

January 1943

Cochrane found a comfortable seat in a train compartment for six passengers. Two seats were empty. Three young men occupied the trio of seats across from him. They wore civilian clothing but had military shoes and haircuts. They were sitting hugger-mugger across the seats, laughing and pushing each other. Cochrane wasn’t sure whether or not they were drunk, even at that hour of the morning. He was equally unsure if they were Swiss or German until they started to speak and laugh further. Apparently they had just spent a few merry days on leave with some Swiss ladies in Bern.

Their German was from the north of the country, probably near Hamburg. They looked like three army friends on leave. One of them had huge hands and another had a scar across the side of his neck. As Cochrane looked more closely, he saw that most of the man’s left ear was missing. War wounds, Cochrane concluded. Another had food stains all over the side of his suit jacket. It looked as if he’d had a drunken collision with a soup bowl.

The train left the station at 11:23 in the morning. Cochrane pulled his book on Wagner out of his bag, the one that he had bought at the market in Lisbon. He settled in to read, keeping his eyes lowered and his ears open. It would not have been the first time that he saw or overheard something of interest on a train. Little things added up, he always told himself.

Cochrane had brought with him a Swiss newspaper. This had been an unconscious act, unthinking really. The German government was at war not just with an assortment of foreign powers but also with the worldwide free press. Cochrane had placed the copy of Der Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich’s most respected journal, on the empty seat next to him. There was a bold article on the front page focusing on the war on the Eastern front. It was not good news for Team Berlin.

The Wehrmacht had made a bold move in the east to capture Moscow in September and October of 1941. Cochrane knew as much from newspapers in New York and Washington. But now according to the Zurich newspaper, the move had officially failed. Or at best it had not yet been successful, which was the next worst thing to failure. No one in Berlin was admitting anything.

From what Cochrane had read, the Soviet forces had constructed three defensive belts, deploying newly raised reserve armies, tank divisions and rifle brigades. The defenses had stymied further Wehrmacht advances on Moscow.

Now in early 1943, a Soviet strategic counter-offensive was pushing the German armies back to the positions west of Moscow. All this while the dreaded Russian winter held on and snarled logistics for the invaders, much as it had for Napoleon in 1812. The failure to knock Russia out of the war was a major setback, terminating of the goal of a quick German victory in the USSR.

The

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