V2 A Novel of World War II - Robert Harris Page 0,96

into the street.

In the square close to the cathedral, she flagged down a British army jeep – a corporal and two privates. It swerved across the cobbles and braked. The corporal said, ‘Yes, ma’am. Is everything all right?’

‘I believe there is a German soldier hiding in a house near here.’

19

AT THE HEART OF THE regiment’s launch zone, midway between Scheveningen and Wassenaar, in the flat landscape of woods and dunes about two kilometres from the sea, lay the Duindigt racetrack – an eight-furlong oval course, with three stands, built before the Great War. It was here that the mass funeral ceremony for Lieutenant Stock’s launch troop was to be held.

Graf had not wanted to go. Four days after the raid on Peenemünde, in a hastily dug cemetery next to the railway line, more than a hundred coffins had been lowered into a communal grave; he hadn’t even known which of the plain wooden boxes was Karin’s. But how could he use that as an excuse, especially to himself? The deaths of the men were his responsibility as much as anyone’s. It was his duty to pay his respects. So once the V2 had been fired at Mechelen, and after the launch crew had packed up the site, he found himself slipping into the front seat of Seidel’s Kübelwagen, with Sergeant Schenk and a corporal in the back, and setting off to the racetrack.

By the time they arrived, the dilapidated stands, with peeling paintwork and patches of rotted timber, were nearly full. A thousand men had been turned out, willingly or unwillingly: the headquarters troops, who administered the regiment; the technical troops, who unloaded the missiles from the trains and prepared them for flight; the fuel and rocket troops, the launching troops, and all the other ancillaries – drivers, maintenance men, signallers, cooks, flak men, firemen, radio operators – who had been consigned to this deserted stretch of coast in order to fire rockets at the English. They sat in sombre rows, listening as the regimental band played a selection of hymns.

The sky was high, grey, clear; no sign of the RAF. On the sandy track, overgrown with couch grass, half a dozen chairs and a microphone had been set out on a low platform. A Protestant pastor and a Catholic priest sat next to one another. Twelve coffins were lined up in front of it, each draped with a swastika flag and bearing the dead man’s cap. An honour guard stood to attention beside them. The sight of those lonely caps in conjunction with the mournful music had a dismaying effect on Graf. It had been exactly the same at Peenemünde. He took off his hat and wiped his eyes on his sleeves.

Seidel looked at him with concern. ‘Are you all right, Graf?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

They climbed the steps of the stand and found the last few empty seats. The men rose to let them pass. Just as they sat, Kammler’s Mercedes drove onto the racetrack. It made its way slowly in front of the stand and pulled up in front of the coffins. The front passenger door opened and Kammler stepped out. From the rear came Colonel Huber and another tall SS officer. The three arrivals lined up in front of the coffins with their backs to the spectators and extended their arms in the Nazi salute, then mounted the platform and took their seats. Respectful in the presence of the dead, they removed their caps. The easterly wind that had been blowing since before dawn lifted the edges of the swastika flags and ruffled the thick blond hair of the second SS officer. He raised his hand to smooth it back, and Graf would have recognised him by that familiar gesture alone, for he must have seen it a thousand times in the past – on the windswept derelict ground of the Rocket Aerodrome in Berlin, on the test ranges at Kummersdorf, on the North Sea beaches of Borkum, on the Baltic foreshore at Peenemünde, on the central Polish plain of Blizna …

There was a roll of drums. Everyone stood. The band struck up ‘Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden’, the soldiers’ lament. A thousand voices joined in the words:

I once had a comrade

You won’t find a better one

The drum was rolling for battle

He was marching by my side

In the same pace and stride …

Von Braun sang with the rest, but all the while his restless gaze swept the stands – back and forth, up and down, back and forth –