Bloody Sand Part I It had been some weeks since Klaus had last written to his mother, though it was not from a lack of affection. His neglect stemmed from a healthy respect for operational security and the fact that he couldn’t convey any details in a letter. It was unlikely that spies would intercept his letters, but he did respect the opponents in this war, which he thought was only sensible, considering it only took one bullet in the right place - and many parts of the body could be considered the right place - to end a life. What could he possibly write to her without mentioning where he was and where he was going? Which experiences would be safe to write about? He had not been in Africa long. Even his last experience on the European mainland should be avoided. One of the cargo ships had caught fire and the loaded tanks had been lost. What would people at home think if they knew their sons were not even safe on the way to the front? It would be especially hard on his mother. She worried so easily.
He was pulled out of his thoughts when the truck he was riding in came to a halt. It was good to feel solid ground under his feet. The roads had not been comfortable and the dust kicked up by the convoy had made the experience doubly unpleasant. Not that the dust had gone away - the tanks rolling past still kicked it up and still made it hard to see where he was going and after hours of sand being blown in his mouth he was looking forward to a drink of water like a brownshirt to a parade. Still, he supposed it was better than freezing on the Eastern Front. Not by much though. The sun was setting behind the rest of the arriving convoy and in the short time he had been here, he had learned that the burning heat of the day seemed unreal at night, when men were shivering in the cold. He glanced at the pocket watch his father had given him before they had both left from home. He grinned when he remembered the words of his father: “You’ll need this more than me. You’ve always been bad at telling the time from the sun.” Of course they couldn’t have known he’d be going to Africa where the watch would last barely an hour before the sand had stopped it. Luckily knowing the time wasn’t actually that important. That was something officers needed. As long as he did what he was told when he was told to do it, he was on time. The camp was bristling with activity as the trucks that had arrived ahead of his were being unloaded and soldiers were directed to their quarters. He grabbed his gear and fell in behind the rest of his mess. As they were marching towards their assigned quarters he looked around. Even though only a small part of the dispatched forces had arrived, it almost seemed surreal to think that all of this was only a comparatively tiny fraction of the people involved
in this far-flung war. He had long since accepted it, but no matter how many times he contemplated it, he could never quite suppress a feeling of awe. The soldiers talked of home at dinner. One young man, Johann, was talking of his sweetheart. Calling him a young man seemed like a stretch though. He was just 18, or at least he claimed he was. He hadn’t even started to shave and he was very eager to serve his country. He seemed like somebody who had cheated in a year or two to get into the action. His girl was waiting for him at home, he said. Her name was Hilde and to hear him speak of her, she could have been the greatest beauty to ever walk the earth. Some of the older soldiers were grinning at his youthful enthusiasm, others were gazing into space thoughtfully, no doubt thinking of their own waiting girls. “What about you, Klaus?” asked Johann, “What do you miss most about home? Do you have someone waiting?” “My family, of course. But apart from them, real food and the ability to breathe without sucking in sand, I think what I miss most is the forest.” “Aha!” shouted Wolfgang, a large, red-faced man who usually looked angry and only ever shouted when he spoke. “So you are a true German then! I had my doubts about you. But here is someone who knows what has value. A country is like its trees. And Germany is strong like the oaks in her forests. It’s good to hear someone speak some sense!” “Well I’m sure that would be one reason to miss it, Wolfgang, but I mostly just miss the shade it provides. And by the look of your face, you could use some of that too.” Amidst the ensuing laughter Wolfgang’s sunburnt face turned even redder. Whether it was from anger or embarrassment, Klaus could not tell, but it was quite a sight to behold. They were back on the road the next day, back to breathing in dust, back to enduring the heat. They had been sent out on a patrol, although the chances of contact with the enemy were considered very low. Johann was cheerful as ever, regaling the rest of the troops with stories of home as they marched behind the tank that was leading their column, a Panzer II. Suddenly the machine came to a halt with a loud hiss, followed by an eruption of steam and curses from within the machine. “Verdammter Mist!” came from its commander. “It’s overheated. We’ll have to stop and let it cool down. You men go on ahead. Finish the route and we’ll catch up to you later.”
Losing the tank had an upside: It was no longer kicking up dust ahead of them. It looked like the last hours of this patrol might end up being bearable. Even Wolfgang was scowling a little less intensely than usual. After about half an hour‘s march, Johann started singing: “Brot und Frieden hätt’ ich gern, tät es nicht vergessen. Wollt‘ ich hätte zehn Pfund Brot, mich mal satt zu essen!“ (Bread and peace I’d like to have, I would not forget it. Wish I had ten pounds of bread so I could eat my fill). They were laughing when Johann’s singing was suddenly cut short by a loud bang. The boy collapsed and for a moment everything was silent. Then everything seemed to happen at once. Bullets were flying all around and men
were being thrown down. Klaus grabbed Johann and sprinted off the road and down a slope, dragging the boy with him. Keeping his head low, he looked at his friend and saw that he had died smiling. Klaus edged up to the top of the slope. He thought of the tank, which was not that far from them. Would they hear the shots? Perhaps it had already been repaired and was on its way. All the men had to do was hold out until then. Most of the survivors had now gotten to cover. There weren’t many, but they had a fighting chance. Klaus peeked out of his cover and saw an enemy looking straight at him from a rock some 30 meters away from the road. He quickly raised his rifle, aimed and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He ducked back into cover and checked his rifle. It was the sand again. It was always the damn sand. It would end up being the death of him, he thought. Then his eye caught an object rolling down the slope a few meters next to him. He started running, shouting “Granate”! Then he felt a force pushing him faster than his legs would carry him and the world turned black.
Bloody Sand Part II The smell of a fire was drifting across from the clearing. Klaus could see the light and hear cheerful voices. He had sat down under the large alder in the afternoon to escape the hot summer sun and must have fallen asleep. The crackling of the fire was loud even at this distance. As he got up to go and join the festivities a sharp pain shot through his scalp. Sinking back to the ground, he reached up to his head and felt something warm and wet. He looked at his hand, which was bright red. He struggled back to his feet, dazed and confused, when something hit his head, throwing him back to the ground. Suddenly afraid he scrambled back up and started running. The crackling of the fire had become louder and boded of doom. The ground felt treacherous and unsure. Looking down he found that the ground was no longer covered in leaves, but in sand. He heard voices shouting his name, but could make out little else and did not know who was calling him. A sudden pain made him feel like a glowing piece of metal had been pressed into the side of his shoulder. He kept running.
He ran for what felt like an eternity when he stumbled over something. As he fell once more, the ground shifted beneath him, opening up into a ravine. He plunged down into a dark, icy cold river. He tried to struggle to the surface, but darkness took him again and he lost consciousness. When Klaus came to, the heat of the day had turned into a cold that was almost unbearable. He opened his eyes to find himself in the desert, illuminated by nothing but the crescent moon and the stars, which were brighter than any he had ever seen. His head was throbbing with a sharp pain and there was dried blood along the side of his face and uniform. He was sprawled in front of a rock with his face only a few centimetres from another one with sharp, jutting edges. He’d been lucky. He could see nothing recognisable in the distance. He had no idea where he was. His tracks had been blown away by the wind. Assuming he had been running in a straight line in his dazed condition, he could use the way he had been lying in front of this rock to roughly tell which direction he had come from. It was the only thing he had to go on. Waiting for the morning to try and navigate using the sun seemed like a bad idea. He was thirsty, exhausted and his head felt like it had been hit with hammers. Judging by how weak he felt he must have lost quite a lot of blood. He reached for his canteen. It was still three quarters full. He took small slow sips and felt some life coming back into his parched throat. A quick inspection of his body revealed that a bullet had grazed his right shoulder. It hurt, but he hadn’t lost the function of his arm. The wound was however covered in sand and dirt and would probably turn ugly unless he did something soon. A nasty laceration in his scalp accounted for the blood on his face. This wound would also need treatment soon. He had heard what happened to people who went into septic shock and had no intention of dying that way. His helmet had a piece torn out of it. An inch lower and he would not have any of the problems he was
having now. The cork had seemingly done nothing to stop the bullet. He would have probably been better off if he had not even worn the helmet. The cold was seeping through his body. He would have to do something to stay warm and in his situation the most sensible thing seemed to be walking. He reached into his pack and retrieved a small piece of chocolate he had been saving. It was deformed, but it would certainly give him a little more strength and he needed all the strength he could muster if he was to make it back to the camp. There was of course a chance that he would be considered a deserter for running from the fight, but the Desert Fox was widely respected by his soldiers and Klaus hoped that the fact that he was heavily concussed might be considered an exigent circumstance. He got to his feet and had to fight off a wave of nausea. He pulled his jacket closer around him and started walking. The bright light of the moon in the clear night allowed him to avoid the rocks and he trod carefully. If he fell again, he might not be able to get back up. All he had to do was reach a road, at least in theory. He knew he had been east of Sirte. If he got back to the road he should be able to follow it back to the town and safety, but if he took too long he would run out of water and die of thirst. That was of course only if his wounds did not get infected and take him out first. A sense of urgency came over him and he had to force himself not to walk too quickly. If he exhausted himself he would also be doomed. All in all he did not like his chances, but he was determined to survive. He wasn’t done with this place. He would get back, he would go on and once the damned war was over, he would finally get away from this bloody sand! The sun was starting to come up when he finally reached the road. His legs were weak, his head felt like it was in a vice, but at least walking had kept his body from freezing.
He found a large rock, not too far from the road, and sat down behind it to take a rest. A drink from his canteen revealed the next problem. He still had water left, but now that the sun was coming up he would need to drink a lot more to stay hydrated. He was sure he had not approached the road directly from the south. There were two possibilities: either he had strayed to the east, in which case he would probably not have enough strength to make it back to the camp, or he had strayed further to the west, which would certainly increase his chances of getting back. The saving grace of the situation was that navigation would be easy from this point. He knew he had come from the south, since the coast was visible and to the north. That meant he would simply have to keep the ocean on his right side in order to get back to Sirte. If he was lucky a patrol would find him. If he was unlucky, the ambush was only part of a larger assault and he would be walking into enemy hands, but that was unlikely. He had heard nothing of a force large enough to manage such a feat. But he also hadn’t been told to expect enemies as close to Sirte as the ones who put him in this situation. There was only one thing for it. He would walk and trust in his luck. He had come this far. It would be a strange fate that let him fail this close to reaching his salvation. Walking on the road was a lot easier than struggling through the sand. He could feel his progress quicken even though fatigue was seeping deeper into him. The pain in his head and arm was almost unbearable, but he was resolved to reach safety and struggled on. It was only about an hour later when he could see dust being kicked up in front of him. A group of vehicles was approaching. He wanted to get off the road and into cover so he could see what it was before he was seen, but when he tried, he found his legs would no longer obey him. He decided that no matter who it was that was coming, they would find him still on his feet. That much strength he could muster. Minutes later the convoy came into view. The car in the lead slowed and stopped. German soldiers jumped out and raised their weapons. The officer in the front of the car approached Klaus suspiciously. “Who are you?” “Schmitt, 5th light division, scouts”, Klaus managed to croak in response, “We were ambushed on patrol.” “Get him on the truck! Let’s get you back to base, soldier! We’ll talk later!” As they helped him climb up the back of the truck, Klaus couldn’t help but feel like some of the looks the other soldiers gave him were rather hostile. He might be in trouble. But for now he was safe. He leaned back, drank the last of the water in his canteen, and closed his eyes.
Bloody Sand Part III Klaus was sitting in the back of a truck. The suspension was rattling him on the sandy and rocky road, while the ever-present dust was once again settling into every opening in his clothes. He didn’t mind it much anymore. He was busy wondering where he had gone wrong. His first thought was that he should have never joined the army, but then he probably wouldn’t have had much of a choice in that matter anyway. The bigger one seemed to have been his blatant underestimation of Wolfgang, the angriest German in the camp. Klaus had thought of him as an idiot. A man who, a hundred years ago, would have been a bumbling village simpleton; well-meaning but often unhelpful. That was why he had rejected what he now realised had been Wolfgang’s idea of an offer of friendship. In retrospect, saying Wolfgang could need the shade of the oak, and putting its symbolism completely aside had probably been a bad idea.
Klaus realised now that in the industrialised world of cities, smoke and overpopulation, Wolfgang’s life had been very different from his own. Instead of growing up in the countryside learning to be friendly and to use his massive strength for the good of the community, he grew up in one of the overcrowded cities of the 20th century. Wolfgang had talked of his father once. The man had died in the Great War, leaving Wolfgang to be raised by his mother and uncle, a cruel man who resented the task of feeding yet another child, especially one that wasn’t his. As a young man in the overcrowded city, living in poverty, Wolfgang would have had trouble finding any work, least of all any work that would have paid enough to pull himself out of the situation he was in. Instead of becoming somebody who cared for his community, he became someone who resented it. When the party started spreading its rhetoric and combining it with the promise of work for everyone and more space to live in, Wolfgang must have been a perfect recipient for it. Klaus had never paid much heed to the large, angry man but perhaps he should have. He had assumed that his jokes and sarcasm went over Wolfgang’s head but now he realised that had been a mistake. Maybe Wolfgang possessed a sort of intelligence Klaus had never credited him with. The sort of intelligence that let him see when he was being made fun of. As someone who truly believed the party’s propaganda, he could not have been happy with it. In many ways the ideology Wolfgang believed in was a simple one: it gave him something to fight for. His country, his people. It gave him something to hate. The fact that the people he hated were seen to have money had probably made it easier for him to hate them. Klaus had been a problem though. He was one of the people Wolfgang was supposed to fight for. He was supposed to hate with him. Wolfgang had never been outright hostile, even when Klaus was talking down to him. That had changed with the ambush.
After Klaus had received the wound to his head, he ran. It was not cowardice, or at least Klaus didn’t think it was. For Wolfgang it would have looked different. He saw a man running from a fight. It turned out that the bullet that had grazed Klaus’s arm had been fired by him. It would have killed him if his aim had not been thrown off by a piece of shrapnel that had sheared off a large part off his nose. So while Klaus had been cleared for duty again because the doctors agreed that what he had done was as a result of a strong concussion, Wolfgang had not forgiven him. And he really knew how to bear a grudge. If it had been only Wolfgang, it would not have been so bad. Klaus had dealt with him for months. He thought he knew how to handle him. The dynamic had changed.
It was the nose that did it. Klaus had always thought that Germans had had a strange attitude towards wounds and what they said about bravery. This was evident in the university, students who had Schmiss(duelling scars on the face) showed that they were members of academia and willing to fight for their honour. While a missing nose would not fool anyone into believing that Wolfgang was an academic, it did seem to have had an almost gravitational effect on some of the troops, men who started to see Wolfgang as a hero. The monstrous scar attracted monstrous men. And these men started to resent Klaus as much as Wolfgang did. It started out in subtle ways: someone would bump into him in the mess without apologising. Things would go missing. He found himself doing duties no one liked doing more and more often. Soon the last of his friends were too scared to sit with him in the mess. Klaus found himself isolated, surrounded by hostility. He began questioning if maybe the loud, red-faced fool had a point. Had he abandoned his comrades to die? He remembered, vaguely, running in a dreamlike state. He remembered feeling fear. Had his subconscious played tricks on him? Did he forget the enemy was there and run from some phantom fear, because the truth was that he was a coward? He no longer knew. He was racked by doubts, barely slept and withdrew as much as he could to avoid conflict. But there was almost nowhere he could hide and Wolfgang and his cronies knew it. It was December when Klaus finally made a decision. Close to Christmas, far from home, far from his loved ones, in the heat of the desert, after being tormented by the men who should have been his comrades, Klaus decided to betray his country. It was not premeditated. But it didn’t just happen. He had been sick of fighting enemies in front of him while having to worry about the friends behind him. He had been sick of how Wolfgang had been staring at him. He had been sick of what this war had become for him. A war on three fronts. A war against the enemy, a war against his comrades and an inner war against himself. It was, of course, Wolfgang that pushed him over the edge. When the British launched what they called Operation Crusader, an offensive to finally lift the Siege of Tobruk, the fighting had once again intensified. Klaus had welcomed it. A chance to fight was a chance to show valour, to redeem himself. Wolfgang had been only too happy to oblige him in this plan, although he did not know it. Convinced of the younger man’s cowardice,
he always seemed to stick close to him in fights. Just in case another opportunity to avenge the loss of his nose arose. Things may have even gone differently, if Wolfgang did not have a very different interpretation of bravery than Klaus. It happened in a small firefight. Klaus and Wolfgang had managed to flank enemy troops who had dug themselves in on a hill. It had just been the two of them. They had been cut off from their commanding officer and Klaus had realised he might be able to get around the enemy position. Wolfgang had followed him. Things became clear then. Wolfgang wanted to shoot the enemy soldiers. There was no reason to do so. They had surrendered. There was no immediate threat. Wolfgang just wanted to do it, because he hated all enemies of the Reich. He did not resent Klaus for running. He did not resent Klaus for abandoning him. He did not resent his lack of bravery, as he himself was not very brave. He was just too stupid to realise when something was dangerous. He resented Klaus for not hating the enemy as he did. And in that moment he did not realise that he had pushed Klaus too far, and made him dangerous. He had threatened to shoot Klaus if he did not execute the prisoners. He said it would be an easy thing to do. He would blame the British soldiers and say he bravely defeated them. That was when it had happened. He had betrayed his country. It had felt right in the moment. He hadn’t seen an alternative. Now, however, after the German and Italian troops had been pushed back, he had his doubts. He knew that it was the right thing to do. He knew he could not have stopped Wolfgang any other way and he knew that he could not have gone back to his fellow German soldiers if it hadn’t happened. What he regretted was that the British prisoners knew what he had done. They could be interrogated. They could use it against him. If he were to be discovered, he would be shot and his family would be in danger. So he sat there, plagued by doubts, a traitor, a coward and a murderer. Yet, more courageous than he had felt in a long time. Maybe there was something he could do to ensure the safety of the people at home. Something that he could not have done before. He could talk with his enemies and see if they were better than those who called themselves his friends.