Chapter 923: Different

A squad of SS ceremonial guards stood in two rows, holding their rifles, as still as pine trees. Each man had been selected according to strict height standards, and every soldier possessed the purest of Aryan blood. Their faces were the most regular of Germanic features, and under the M35 steel helmets, they looked handsome and upright.

Between them, a large phalanx of men in black suits, black SS uniforms, and army-gray-green dress uniforms stood with their heads bowed. At their very front was the tall, thin Führer, a lonely figure with his back to them.

He just stood there quietly, like a statue, and not far in front of him was an exquisitely polished coffin. In this coffin lay the former Chancellor of this Empire, the old gentleman August, who had once been called the Imperial Chancellor.

Akado stood there. He remembered when this cemetery had been completed, August had had a conversation with him here. The old gentleman had once said to him, “For them to be lying here is a kind of good fortune, because we are still alive and can only bear the ideals they did not complete and continue to walk on.”

As the supreme dictator of this empire, Akado really wanted to say to August, who was lying in the coffin: It is indeed a kind of good fortune for you to be lying here, but to leave all the messy things in this empire for others to bear, isn’t that a kind of cowardly escape?

He really wanted to rush up, to pull that emaciated corpse out of the coffin, and then, grabbing the corpse by the collar, to roar, “Get up, you! There are so many damn things waiting for you to deal with! This empire needs you! I… I need you too.”

“My son!” On the ruins of Stalingrad, a woman wailed, her hands reaching out desperately for her son. But the corpse, wrapped in a pile of tattered cloth on the ground, would never hear his mother’s voice again.

Several shabbily dressed civilians, men and women, were forcefully pulling at this frantic woman, not letting her interfere with the simple funeral that was underway. A few kind neighbors were helping to dig a shallow grave to bury this poor child who had died an untimely death.

Just a few hours ago, this lively little boy had still been shining the leather boots of the German soldiers stationed nearby for money. Many of the Ukrainian soldiers and German soldiers had high salaries. They would pay with chocolate and some canned food, and have these Soviet civilians, who were living a precarious existence in the occupied territory, help them with things like washing clothes or shining shoes.

But now it seemed that another good shoeshine boy had disappeared from this world. He no longer had to run around on the dangerous positions for the sake of his stomach, nor did he have to huddle in a corner of the ruins, covering his ears through the nights of endless artillery fire. For the people in this city, death seemed to be a kind of release, a wish so beautiful it was absolute, apart from the grief it brought to their loved ones.

“God will be with him. In a beautiful heaven, he will live a happy and beautiful life,” an old man with a beard, who was acting as a priest, said from over there. He was the “Baozhang” (head of a local security unit) appointed by the Germans in the nearby occupied territory, a role similar to an administrator.

But he was clearly not used to presiding over funerals, so his lines were a bit off—of course, this was already a pretty good funeral. After all, of the people who died in this city of Stalingrad every day, 99% would not have such a funeral of their own.

“Fire the volley!” At a loud shout from the master of ceremonies, the neat honor guard raised their steel rifles. As if they were clones, these soldiers completed the command to raise their rifles with the same angle and the same movement. The rustling of their clothes combined into a “whoosh” that carried far.

A slight stir began in the crowd. Many of the women in black dresses began to wipe the tears from the corners of their eyes with white handkerchiefs. The military officers held their caps, most with their heads slightly bowed. The entire atmosphere was so bleak it made one involuntarily shake their head. The faint sound of weeping was even more heartbreaking.

Old August had maintained a very good relationship with the Wehrmacht his whole life, so apart from the generals on the Eastern Front, most of the high-ranking generals had come to attend this state funeral. What was even more commendable was that the high command of the SS also regarded this old man as their best friend, so the SS generals attending the funeral were so numerous they looked as if they had all turned out.

Because August had drawn up all sorts of excellent policies to stabilize the country, these policies had revitalized Germany’s economy, and these policies had allowed the German people to live an unprecedentedly good life. So all along the way, the ordinary people of Berlin had lined the streets for the funeral, a grand scene. The funeral in the cemetery was so grand that it even made the living a little envious.

The Führer himself carried the coffin, the procession of honor guards was of an exceptional standard, the funeral list had hundreds of names, and even the governor of the British occupied territory had rushed back. The location of old August’s grave was the closest to the center of the entire cemetery, and everyone knew that the very center here was the Führer’s own “place.”

Crack! With a single, unified gunshot, the smell of gunpowder filled the air. A clergyman with a huge silver cross on his chest softly recited the scriptures for the deceased. As a devout Christian, the procedure for August’s funeral had even been consulted with the Archbishop of Rome. Who would have thought that a phone call in the middle of the night, spanning thousands of kilometers, would wake up the most powerful cleric in the Vatican, just to ask how to properly bury a dead man? When power reached a certain level, even God had to show some respect.

The middle-aged man, his face expressionless, forcefully drove the cold shovel into the rubble and mud, then pried forward with all his might, digging up a shovelful of miscellaneous dirt. He twisted his body and threw the shovelful of dirt into the grave, covering the tattered cloth that wrapped the little boy’s body.

The sky was gloomy, as if it were about to pour. But no one cared about that, because in the sky, you could still see the Stuka II bombers searching for targets to bomb, you could still hear the rumbling of the cannons, and in the distance, the continuous sound of machine gun fire.

The child’s mother was still wailing heart-rendingly. Her husband had died in battle a month ago, leaving her with a single son in the hard life of Stalingrad. Originally, she had not been very friendly to the arrival of the German army. After all, her husband had been turned into a sieve by these foreigners.

But life had to go on. No matter how deep her hatred, she still had to raise her son. So in the end, she had taken on some sewing, mending, and washing jobs at home, while her young son, like the other children in the neighborhood, shined the shoes of the German occupation forces to supplement the family’s income.

Who would have known that the good times would not last long? A shell fired by the Soviets had landed beside her son. There was no German army in the vicinity, so the only ones who had died were a few teenagers. The civilians in the neighborhood were unwilling to let their children’s bodies be exposed in the wilderness, so they had held this simple funeral.

In a city like this, a hell, no one knew if they would die in the next second. But everyone was still trying their best to maintain their last shred of decency, to insist on a line that separated them from the beasts. Although the people attending the funeral were all in rags, it could be seen that they had straightened their attire.

The shovel was thrown over again, and some more soil was covered on the child’s body. A little bit of mud splattered on his pale, youthful face, a heart-wrenching sight. Everyone fell silent. The woman’s crying became even more shrill, piercing the heart.

“He was like a father to me…” Akado read the prepared eulogy into the microphone, his voice trembling. He had not let anyone revise this eulogy that he had written himself, as sad as a child mourning an elder.

At the end of the funeral, everyone raised their right hands, a dense sea of them in an instant. Although there was no earth-shaking shout, no familiar slogan, the Greater German salute was still so solemn, still so stirring.

Two ordinary pieces of wood were tied together to form a cross and were stuck in front of the small grave. There was no name of the deceased on it, and no exquisite wreaths. But everyone knew this was a grave, because behind this grave were a full 300 similar ones. Most of them had a damaged steel helmet hanging on them, some German, some Soviet.

At the foot of a nearby building, a group of German soldiers leaned against their backpacks, miscellaneous items, and ammunition boxes, watching with cold eyes as the Soviet civilians buried the dead child. Many were talking to each other, but there was none of the usual joking. The voices of these soldiers were all lowered a few notches. The deep eyes under their steel helmets stared at the people who were as devout as if they were attending a mass.

A young German soldier stood out from the crowd of onlookers. From his attire, he should be from the grenadier unit of the N Army Group’s main force, the 14th Panzer Corps. This young man with a G43 semi-automatic rifle on his back walked to the side of the Soviets who had just been about to disperse and called out to the silent people in Russian.

“Your son has shined the shoes of many of us. We enjoyed chatting with him very much,” this young German soldier said, handing the bag in his hand to the deceased’s mother. “We have some potato powder here. It might not taste very good… but please, accept our small token of sympathy.”

The Germans had killed her husband, and the Soviets had killed her son. This woman no longer knew if she should refuse the enemy’s charity. She numbly took the bag and stumbled towards the ruins where she lived.

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