Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [97]
Dietrich looked into the kennel of furry balls, lifted a puppy, and smiled as its wet nose and tongue drenched him with affection.
“Aha. The only bitch in the litter. What will you call her, Kadett Rascher?”
“I will call her Ernestine. She will be my girl until I can return to another Ernestine.”
Even the cruel taskmasters were pleased at the way Kadett Rascher trained his bitch, Ernestine. There was the magnificent communication between man and beast strived for but seldom reached. No getting away from it, Rascher had a way with animals. He could get more from his bitch whispering in her ear than all the other cadets with their leashes, straps, choke collars, and throw chains. For that first year the young cadet and his dog were together day and night, the patrols of Schwabenwald, the hunts for escapees, guard duty. The hard discipline, the ugliness of the camp were all forgotten in the evening when he sat on his cot and read and reached down and was able to run his hand through the dog’s fur.
A few days before the graduation ceremony, the permanent awarding of the black uniform, the death’s head insignia, and the SS dagger, Kadett Dietrich Rascher and his dog were called into a blank, stone room in the kennel. His Hauptsturmfuehrer was there.
“I am pleased with your progress, Rascher,” the captain said. “You have learned your lessons well. You will be a credit to the master race. Before receiving your SS dagger there is, however, a final obedience test that all SS men must take.”
“Jawohl,” Rascher snapped from his position to attention.
“You will, at this instant, choke your dog to death.”
SS Kadett Dietrich Rascher passed his final test of obedience. With neither qualm, hesitation, nor visible show of personal emotion, he reached down, grabbed the trusting animal, put a choke hold on her, and pressured quickly to snap her neck. He then came back to attention.
“With men like you,” the captain congratulated, “we are undefeatable.”
A sudden wind beat a tattoo of water on the window. Dietrich continued to stare at his hand.
“What is it, darling?” she pleaded, “what is it?”
“How long can this go on?” Bruno Falkenstein moaned. “Maybe it would be better if a bomb fell on us and killed us all.”
“Please don’t speak like that before the girls,” Herta pleaded.
“Yesterday, six hours of raids and the day before that all day. Today, it may never end. What have we done to deserve this?”
Ernestine looked at her father quizzically. Perhaps the people of Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London wondered the same thing, she thought. Strange, father didn’t seem unhappy about it then.
“Turn that damn music box off, it drives me crazy!” he commanded.
“Yes, Father.”
Ernestine was shocked when she saw Dietrich on his furlough from the Eastern Front. She knew that the war would do something to him, but he was still not much more than a boy. Dietrich was twenty-two now, but all that was gentle was gone.
Furloughs were created to bring a soldier happiness and renew his vigor to fight. Ernestine had kept a belief that Dietrich Rascher would never slip beyond the power of her love. She had lost him.
Every night of his leave he was stinking from schnaps and beer. He lolled on the bed too drunk to make love ... he babbled ... was given to sudden wild rages and weeping incoherent confessions about unknown crimes.
Corpses ... Jew corpses ... tens of thousands of naked Jews ... burning barns ... burning villages ... men with beards praying ... naked mothers ... sisters ... grandmothers ... pits filled with burning corpses ... his machine gun rattled into the corpses ... dogs ripped the Jew throats ... the wild eyes of the cheering Ukrainians while the SS gunned the Jews into the pits ... the