Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [100]
What I really wish, Ernestine, is that I was nineteen again and you and I were sailing on the Wannsee and I could have turned our boat toward a canal and sailed to the North Sea and over the oceans to the South Seas ... forever and ever and ever.
My respects to your father and mother. My affection to Hilde, and my hopes that your brother, Gerd, returns safely from the war.
What little love I have given or received in this life has been yours. I fear it is not worth much.
Always,
Dietrich
Chapter Two
April 21, 1945
THE LITTLE STONE BRIDGE fording the Oder River was damaged by gunfire during the German retreat. It now strained under a burden for which it had never been built.
An endless parade of Stalin tanks and other treaded monsters from the bottomless Russian arsenal buckled the bridge down to its foundations. Mammoth units of self-propelled artillery, antitank pieces, the new rocket launchers, and iron-wheeled horse-drawn gondola wagons and trucks bearing the name Studebaker and Chevrolet all joined the line waiting to cross. Horses, men, iron moved toward the final day in Berlin.
Colonel Igor Karlovy, chief of engineers of the Third White Russian Front, dived below the surface of the river to study the effects on the strained underpinnings of the bridge. He surfaced and swam for shore, where a waiting party of helping hands pulled him up the bank. He was surrounded by impatient consultants as he wiped himself dry and lit a cigarette. He dressed. Igor Karlovy was a powerful, muscled man though a bit below average in height. Blond hair, a trace of high cheekbones, and ice-blue eyes gave testament to a Tartar element in his ancestry centuries before. His naked torso revealed shrapnel wounds from another battle. Once his tunic was buttoned about his neck his appearance seemed more aged than thirty-six years. It was a face that had known much, felt much, suffered much. He carried obvious authority.
“The bridge will collapse. There is no possible way to reinforce it. Erosion has set in in the foundation.”
Field Marshal Popov’s personal aide, a nervous major, inquired, “How long will the bridge hold up?”
“Ask the bridge,” Karlovy answered.
“We have more than two thousand heavy pieces to get over in this sector. If this bridge goes it can delay the entire offensive on Berlin.”
Igor merely shrugged. “Berlin is not going to run away.” Popov’s aide did not fathom Igor Karlovy’s humor. He knew the marshal had his heart set on opening the offensive so Berlin might fall by May Day.
The entourage followed Colonel Karlovy downstream. He consulted with two other engineers and decided upon the best place to erect temporary crossings.
“The main highway will have to be diverted so there must be a rampway built to get the mobile equipment down the bank. I suggest cutting some of these lovely German trees and constructing a log road. Now, if Marshal Popov will assign a regiment of men for labor I think we can have a crossing by tomorrow morning.”
“No sooner?”
“Certainly not.”
The aide stomped off to get the labor. Igor drew up hasty plans for building of a crossing. Captain Ivan Orlov pushed into the circle and drew the colonel out. He pointed to his watch excitedly. “Commissar Azov is waiting for us at Eberswalde.”
Captain Orlov obviously dropped Azov’s name for the colonel knew V. V. Azov was more powerful than Popov himself. Ivan Orlov, the party man assigned to watch the engineers, was apt to panic at the thought of being late to see the commissar.
“Drive across the bridge before it collapses and wait until I get things set up. If the bridge goes down, I’ll swim over to you as quickly as I can ... now, please ...”
Captain Ivan Orlov went off to the Mercedes staff car they had commandeered from a German general in Warsaw. He blew the horn with jerky violence and swung the vehicle between a pair of gargantuan SU-100 tanks rumbling over the trembling bridge.
Toward midday a human blanket of labor swarmed over