Chapter 518: On Leave Again
After a short march, Rein’s tank 113, along with tanks 112 and 115, returned to their battalion headquarters. There, they rendezvoused with tanks 114 and 111, which had completed their repairs.
The commanders of both tanks were filled with regret for having missed such a great victory. The commander of tank 111, who had stayed behind to cover tank 114, was especially envious to the point of spitting blood when he heard that Rein had fought a major battle and had captured thousands of workers and hundreds of pieces of equipment.
“Cheers! To victory!” Rein said, raising his mess tin, which was filled with beer purchased locally.
“Cheers! To Captain Rein!” “Cheers! To the Führer!” the other commanders also raised their cups and chimed in.
They now had a holiday of up to half a month, which was the envy of the German infantry marching nearby. Billeted in a small town that had been occupied for some time, enjoying the sunshine and hot baths, the soldiers of the 502nd Heavy Tank Destroyer Battalion were thoroughly enjoying the vacation they had earned through their life-or-death struggle.
There was no need to arrange for guards, no need to worry about the shells in their tanks. Apart from playing cards and shopping, all they had left was to squander their leisure time. For a unit that had been active on the front lines for a long time, this was simply wonderful.
Unfortunately for Rein and the others, their holiday was to end that afternoon. They were to represent the entire 502nd Heavy Tank Destroyer Battalion and return to Berlin to participate in a promotion ceremony personally presided over by the Army General Staff.
Rein’s promotion had been approved. His promotion ceremony to captain would be personally presided over by Field Marshal von Brauchitsch. However, what was puzzling was that Army Group G’s application for a decoration for Rein had been rejected by the Army General Staff, on the grounds that his achievements did not yet meet the requirements and that he should continue to work hard.
This was a result that most people had anticipated. Although Rein had performed exceptionally well on the front lines, to award him the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords still seemed a bit too reckless.
Brauchitsch had received the Swords to his Oak Leaves Knight’s Cross for his role in commanding the French campaign. Rundstedt had received the Swords for his heaven-defying achievements in occupying the British mainland. And Rommel and Guderian, who were known as the “Imperial Twins,” still only wore the same Oak Leaves Knight’s Cross as Rein.
However, Rein’s combat performance this time was truly beyond reproach. So, after rejecting the request for the decoration, the General Staff decided to compensate Rein for his military achievements by having Field Marshal von Brauchitsch personally preside over a captain’s promotion ceremony. For a mid-level commander on the front line, this was already a tremendous honor.
This was as good as telling everyone that this young man was a rising star favored by the General Staff, that his future would be one of smooth sailing and high promotions. It was not impossible that he would become a panzer general, even reaching the rank of general. So, you’d all better keep your eyes open!
With this, Rein’s 15-day holiday became a long round trip to Berlin. The tanks did not have to be taken along. Only the five crew members would accompany a train carrying the wounded back to Germany.
At the train station in the small town in the rear, the crew of tank 113, having been baptized by the flames of war, truly understood the cruelty of war. The station was packed with the lightly and seriously wounded. Some of these soldiers were lying on the ground, groaning. Others stood there with empty sleeves, silently staring at the end of the distant railway tracks.
Hidden beneath the glorious halo of victory of the German main forces and the great panzer armies was the casualty figure of over a hundred thousand traditional infantrymen. Only these soldiers themselves could truly understand the heavy price the German army had paid for its victory. The lucky ones had lost their fingers and toes; the more tragic had lost their legs and arms.
Even so, the wounded who had made it to this station were still the lucky ones. After all, a hundred thousand German soldiers had been left forever on the road from Poland to here. They had become the gravestones by the side of the road, watching over the path the German army had passed.
“Excuse me. You don’t seem to be wounded. Do you have a leave permit?” a German officer who was temporarily in charge of the small station asked, walking over and looking at Rein and the others. He had to check the documents and identities of the people boarding the train to avoid a shortage of seats.
“Hello! We have a leave permit. We’re going to Berlin, under orders to take this train,” Rein said, taking the permit from his breast pocket and handing it to the officer in charge of order at the small station for him to check.
After reading the document, the officer looked up and stared in surprise at the Iron Cross on Rein’s collar. He complimented him with great envy, “So it’s Captain Rein. Congratulations on having the Field Marshal personally preside over your promotion ceremony. Your heroic performance in battle also inspires me.”
Rein smiled and shook hands with the officer. “A pleasure to meet you. Perhaps I will see you at this station again when I return.”
“I hope you won’t be getting off here…” the officer laughed along. “Perhaps you will take the train directly and get off in Kiev.”
Rein was taken aback for a moment, then nodded. “I hope so! If I can see you in Kiev as well, I will treat you to a drink in a bar there.”
To be honest, to save transport capacity and to get the resources plundered from the Soviet Union back to the country as soon as possible, the conditions of the carriages prepared by the German railway department for the wounded were not very good. These wounded soldiers were often squeezed a hundred to a carriage, and the air was filled with the smell of disinfectant and blood.
The entire train was terribly noisy, and it was impossible to get a good rest. Some of the wounded, because they had no one to take care of them, had even relieved themselves in their own bunks, making the whole carriage stink. The people nearby cursed loudly, making the already noisy environment even worse.
The freed-up freight cars were used to transport various raw materials, including plundered metals and precious materials, as well as high-quality timber and some important equipment. The hundred or so machine tools that Rein had captured, which were being transported by road, had made the train carrying the wounded even more crowded. Looking at those pitiful wounded soldiers, Rein even felt a little bit of guilt.
The conditions of Rein’s carriage were much better. Most of the space in their carriage was taken up by works of art that had been looted from various regions of the Soviet Union. The space left for them was not large, but it had a toilet and seats. Compared to the wounded soldiers’ carriage on the other side, it could be considered a paradise.
And so they left the front, where the war was not yet over, to represent the soldiers at the front for the second time and be received by the big shots back in Berlin. But Rein always felt that they could not represent the soldiers fighting on the front line. At the very least, he could not represent the wounded soldiers in the next carriage, who were lying on their sickbeds, without their arms and legs.
Everyone has a different view of war. At least these soldiers who had lost their arms and legs in the war would not love this demon that had taken their limbs from them.
A young soldier, before he has gone to the battlefield, raises his arm and shouts the slogans of “Long live victory, long live the Führer.” A few hours later, he may be lying on the ground, looking at his own intestines, and crying out for his mother and for God.
Who will go and ask those who have already died, in the moment they closed their eyes, did they hate the Führer? Did they hate that past fanaticism?
The train moved backwards, crossing the plain. Looking at the plumes of black smoke rising in the distance, Rein was silent. He was used to such sights and felt no emotion for the black smoke rising from the horizon, which he saw every day. Beside him, Andre, Alice, Baumann, and Bruce were all accustomed to this scene.
But who could have imagined that the scene before their eyes was so astonishingly similar to the descriptions of hell? Who could have associated the things they saw every day with the doomsday echoes that many people feared? The burning flames, the broken steel, the mangled limbs, the ground covered in blood—when people become accustomed to such an environment, where is paradise?
But when the train passed through the Ukrainian plain, passed through the desolate and terrifying eastern part of Poland, the reconstructed central part of Poland, with its fields of farms, finally reminded people that the place they lived was indeed not a domain controlled by the god of death.
Andre looked at the scenery outside the window, a look of imperceptible relief in his eyes, but this was all seen by Rein.
“Relieved? You’re right. Only by seeing all this does our killing and sacrifice have some meaning,” Rein said to Andre with a wry smile. “You don’t have to hide your relief. If we fight to the death on the battlefield, and after we have given our lives for this country, the people we love do not get the good life they deserve, then aren’t we just wasting our efforts now?”
“The Führer is building this country! So I think we should be the soldiers who protect this country,” Andre said, looking at Rein and then nodding. “You are right. Our killing should and must have meaning.”
“If it is the right thing to do to destroy other people’s homes to seek benefits for one’s own relatives,” Rein added in his heart, “then everything we have done today is right, and very meaningful.”
He did not say the words in his heart out loud, because the Führer needed him to go to war, to kill. His life, his everything, had been given to him by that man, so there was no need for him to think too much about messy problems. He only needed to be sure that the Führer still needed him to fight, and that was enough.
To survive, for a better tomorrow, to protect the things you care about, you fight on. For a man, there is nothing more to say about all this, only to do it.
Published: 2025-09-01T04:06:33.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-12-08T19:01:41.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c518-on-137832462
Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com