On the day of the last advance I found the Standartenführer curled up all alone in the back of his Kübelwagen. He had fallen asleep fully clothed. The hat with the death’s head was still set at exactly the same angle as always showing some of his light brown hair, which was now dark from pomade and sweat. His wrinkled leather coat clung to his body like a macabre nightgown fit for a butcher. His gloved hands were holding on to his binoculars in the tight grip I had seen so often on men killed in the moment of action. Maybe they were of use in his dreams that nervously fluttered behind his eyelashes.

Oh, his eyes, they always worried me. During the past weeks he had looked horribly sick, dying even. His skin was almost transparently white, marbled with pale blue veins, and grey in the hollows of his face. The corners of his eyes were red from days without rest and stood in stark contrast with the blue of his iris. A beautiful composition often found these days in the ranks of the SS.

It was early in the morning and the light was dim and pale. The smell of burned wood was still in the air and occasionally the wind lifted the ash of the charred remains of the village, which we had set ablaze last night in cold frenzy. The tiny particles seemed to gain a life of their own now, swirling like black spirits around the resting men. It was like a painting of Nordic myth with the Standartenführer at its centre, a scrawny greyhound with blood drenched fur resting after a good night’s hunt.

I woke our hound up with a light touch to his shoulder. He opened his eyes so abruptly that I froze under his stare thinking he might jump at my throat. When he recognized me his look softened and he gave me a tired smile. The dry leather of his coat crackled. He raised himself off the seat into a sitting position with slow, deliberate movements. His hands were shaking as he tried to rest his weight on them. I felt a pang of sorrow and averted my eyes. All the blood, brains and guts, the tears, piss and shit, but that small loss of control still bothered me.

“What time is it?”, he asked demanding my attention again. He was holding one hand with the other now in a pose reminiscent of prayer, evidently intended to suppress the shaking by force.

I looked at my clock. “It’s six ten”, I said, “in the morning.”

He scanned the surroundings, clever blue eyes jumping from tanks, cars and smouldering ruins to his men, who were huddled together in groups of two to a dozen, some still asleep, others munching on dry bread looking cold and miserable.

He loosened the grasp on his hand only to find the shaking return. He groaned quietly and clenched his fists but to no avail. The open acknowledgement of his condition took a burden off me. His stimulant abuse was an open secret. There were limits to the human condition even if the will wouldn’t falter.

“You need to do something for me”, he said with the intonation of a command. I snapped back into military posture and habits. “Jawohl, Standartenführer.” He could look quite charming when one gave him his due respect. Some people praised kind leaders who mingled with their men and treated them like equals, I had always been partial to the likes of our Standartenführer. His orders were clear and absolute. His word, his responsibility, my duty. I embraced this obedience, it brought a clarity to my mind that I had lacked in my teenage years. It is quite wonderful what man can do when he must.

“Do you have any bandages on you?”, he asked. I rummaged in my bags and found a couple. “Get in the car”, he said patting the seat next to him. I did as I was told. He was sitting almost comfortably now, legs crossed at the knees and his back resting on the seat. His hands however were digging into the edge of it as if holding on for his life.

“Open my coat”, he said. I took off my gloves and fumbled with the thick leather buttons until I had opened the front of the coat revealing the grey tunic underneath. The knight’s cross was pinned to his breast pocket. “The tunic too.” When I opened his tunic I realized something was wrong. The shirt underneath was dark brown. It felt starched. Dried blood. I hastily opened it too and found his undershirt drenched in blood, old and brown mixed with the wet shine of fresh blood. Learned instinct kicked in. I hurried to peel him out of his uniform to inspect the wound. He was weak under my hands, offering no resistance as I took off coat, tunic, shirt and undershirt. I had stripped his torso completely when he stopped me. “I’m fine”, he said with such clarity that I halted. “I’ll have a medic take care off it when we rendezvous with Kampfgruppe Werner. I just need you to change the bandage.”

I realized how much I had overstepped his boundaries. I had never seen him naked. He didn’t wash himself together with us, he hadn’t sunbathed on the hot summer days in Russia or went swimming on the days off in France. I felt an unseemly urge to see what he was hiding. He looked so fragile, bedded on his uniform like a doll thrown by a disinterested child. His body was as wiry and pale as his clothed appearance suggested. His left arm was dotted with large round yellow spots, bruises, more than a week old by the looks of it. His hands were still shaking and not just his hands, his arms too were affected by spasms, less frequent than his hands but when they came the blue veins of his underarms writhed like worms under the skin. The only part on his torso that had retained some fat was his chest which looked almost boyish except for the trail of brown hair running vertically across it down to his bellybutton, there it was swallowed by the waist of his trousers. Blood drenched bandages were wrapped around his chest and fastened under his armpits, where they cut into the flesh and trapped strands of his axillary hair. Blood and sweat made for a potent smell. The impression was difficult to reconcile with my memory of him as that fearless daredevil with unyielding haughtiness.

“It’s just superficial shrapnel,” he said with a smirk and I became aware again that he wasn’t as vulnerable as his body suggested. He had been observing me intently. “Just cut the bandage”, he said and pointed to the bayonet on my belt. To suppress the shaking he grabbed the seat with one hand and my thigh with the other. I slid the long blade under the cloth, careful not to cut into him. He watched, not anxiously but with interest. The bandage came off with a snip and I saw the wound. A wide gash across his right breast revealing the flesh like layers of an onion. It was diamond shaped and perfectly symmetrical. The skin was cut and peeled back by the force of the hit revealing the muscle underneath and in the middle of it was a deeper cut right into the flesh. It must have been a sharp thing, more piercing, like a bullet, which was lucky for him as it meant less tearing, crushing and chance of infection.

I threw out the dirty bandages and made sure to peel any remains of the cloth from the wound. Mindful of the cold I tried to act fast. A little too fast maybe. His grip on my thigh became painfully tight.

“The funny thing is, now it stops.”

He let go of me and raised his hands in front of his eyes. They were perfectly still. We stared at them for some seconds before the shaking started again and he threw them down in bitter anger. Then he turned to me, a curious glimmer in his eyes. “Do that again.” I looked at him in disbelief. His expression didn’t allow for disobedience. “Hurt me”, he said sharply.

I placed my thumb on the wound where it was the deepest and pressed lightly. He shook his head disapprovingly. “No, that’s nothing. Harder.” I obeyed. He exhaled sharply. His heart was racing under my thumb. He didn’t tell me to stop. His heaving breast pushed my finger deeper into his flesh, soaking it in fresher blood. His chapped bottom lip dropped. I could hear the shortness of his breath. His pupils dilated, swallowing up the blue of his iris, two black discs staring right through me. My hand was hot with his blood. It dripped down on him, tiny red pearls rolling over the concave of his stomach, downwards where they were sucked up by his waist band. I stared unashamedly, hypnotized by the twistedly erotic image.

“I said stop. That’s enough”, he barked. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled my hand away roughly. I hadn’t heard him at all. That entranced expression was wiped off his face and he just looked mildly annoyed. “Clean the blood off and finish the job”, he said, “Don’t waste my time.”

I cleaned and wrapped him up. His annoyance with me didn’t run deep. “Good job”, he praised my work placing his hand on my shoulder – perfectly still. “See, it stopped.”

It wouldn’t go through my head that I had failed to hear a commanding officer’s order and violated his personal trust. I crawled out of the car while he was still dressing himself, now closing every button of his uniform with utmost control and care. “Go get some tea for me. And tell the boys to get ready, we leave in half an hour.” I snapped my heels and walked away, wondering if everything I had just seen was just a sick day dream. But there was still blood on my hand, a cold and sticky reminder.