Free Chosen of the Valkyries (Twilight Of The Gods Book 2) by Christopher Nuttall Page B

premarital affair would do to her reputation, now everything was up in the air.  Once, it would have been harmless, as long as she’d intended to get married.  Now ...
     
    “They didn't offer us troops,” Horst added.  “Did you notice?”
     
    “We were going to refuse, if they offered,” Gudrun reminded him.  “I don’t know how well they’d fight, but the SS would turn them into a propaganda weapon.”
     
    “True,” Horst said.  “But they didn't even make the offer, when they know as well as we do that an SS victory means their destruction.  I find that rather odd.”
     
    He leaned back into his seat, staring out at the French countryside.  “We’ll get the latest reports when we return to Berlin,” he added.  “And we’ll see what the council has to say about it.”

Chapter Six
     
    Near Warsaw, Germany Prime
    2 September 1985
     
    The town wasn't much, Leutnant Kurt Wieland thought, as they drove into the town square and parked the lorries under a giant statue of a soldier he didn't recognise.  A few dozen homes, a handful of shops, set a couple of miles from the autobahn ... it was the kind of place his parents had talked about going to live when they retired and their children had flown the nest.  He suspected that he would have found it rather boring, if he’d had to live there, but he was still in his twenties.  His parents might have a different attitude.
     
    He jumped down to the ground and barked orders to the soldiers, who scrambled out of the lorries and hurried to take up position near the Town Hall.  The entire town was due to be evacuated and turned into a strongpoint, hopefully one that would slow up the SS for a few hours before they continued advancing towards Berlin.  Kurt had no illusions about just how weak the defence line actually was, even though his actual experience of combat was practically non-existent.  Between the resignations, the deaths and a number of desertions, the forces facing the SS were badly disorganised.  It would take longer than they had, he feared, to get the army into proper shape. 
     
    “The population should have left already,” Oberfeldwebel Helmut Loeb commented.  “But some of them won’t have left.”
     
    Kurt nodded.  The young men and military veterans would have already been called up, although it was anyone’s guess just how many of them would bother to report to the training camps.  They’d signed up to fight the enemies of the Reich , not their fellow Germans.  Quite a few veterans had already been caught trying to slip across the border to the east, or merely hiding in the countryside and hoping not to be found.  They found it impossible, they’d claimed when they were caught, to choose a side. 
     
    And I would find it difficult too, if I hadn't been in Berlin , Kurt thought, as the town was rapidly searched and a handful of stragglers pushed into the square.  I saw the SS mowing down innocent Germans as if they were Slavs .
     
    He glanced down at his hands, wondering if he should feel guilty.  He’d broken his oaths when he’d opened fire on the SS, triggering off the Battle of Berlin.  It wasn't something he should feel guilty for, he told himself, but he knew he’d feel responsible for everyone who died in the coming war.  There could be no doubting it would come, either.  Everyone knew the SS was moving troops up to the borderline and preparing their offensive.  It was only a matter of time before the shit hit the fan.
     
    “This is an outrage,” a loud female voice declaimed.  “We paid for our house!”
     
    Kurt tried hard to suppress a flicker of tired - and utterly inappropriate - amusement.  The speaker was an older woman, easily twenty years older than his mother if she was a day, standing next to a skinny older man who looked thoroughly henpecked.  Kurt wouldn't have cared to try to impose his will on that woman, no matter what the law said about German womenfolk obeying their