Chapter 167: A Little Boy

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Let’s turn the clock back again to September 8, 1937. Not far from the German border with Poland, in the barracks of the 3rd SS Division, which had just been approved for its upgrade to the 3rd SS Panzer Division.

“Attention!” With a single command, several soldiers lying on their hard plank beds scrambled up and stood in front of their respective beds.

A kind-looking officer walked to the doorway of the dormitory and said with a smile, “Welcome to the SS. This is your tank commander.”

As he spoke, he pointed to a short boy who was walking over. The boy was about eighteen years old. His pair of blue eyes were not very bright, blinking in their slightly deep sockets. He had light freckles on his face, and his golden hair was held down by a handsome Wehrmacht-style black peaked cap. The corners of his mouth were turned up slightly.

Because he was very short, the boy’s trousers were bunched up on top of his leather boots, covering the crisscrossing laces of the high boots. Because he was too thin, his web belt was also a bit crooked, making him look rather sloppy.

He raised his right hand in a German salute and shouted in a slightly hoarse voice, “Heil Führer!”

“Heil Führer,” the three soldiers in the dormitory replied listlessly.

“Captain Carter, although we know that there’s a large-scale military expansion going on, you don’t have to get a kid to mess with us,” a man of about thirty grumbled with a look of dissatisfaction. His face was covered with a beard, like an incompletely evolved gorilla.

“This is your loader, a private second class named Bruce. You can call him Gorilla,” the captain named Carter, who had brought the boy, said with a smile, introducing the speaking soldier.

Then, Captain Carter walked over to a sergeant in his twenties who looked a bit nervous and introduced him. “This is Corporal Baumann, your driver! To be honest, apart from you, he has the highest rank here! But he’s rather shy, so he doesn’t offer many opinions—but his driving is a bit… a bit… well, you’ll have to experience it for yourself.”

He smiled again and walked over to a private first class who looked quite normal, pointing to the soldier with round glasses. “This is Private First Class Clark. He is the radio operator and, of course, also responsible for your hull machine gun.”

Unlike the others, the private named Clark immediately stood at attention and returned the salute, looking very sharp. So Captain Carter added, “He’s probably the most normal soldier in this dormitory! His technical skills are quite solid.”

Finally, he pointed to a man sitting in the corner who had not stood up, had not saluted, and had not even lifted his head. He introduced him with a helpless sigh. “This is Andre. He will be your gunner.” He did not mention his rank or anything else.

The man named Andre, a corporal, remained seated in the corner without even lifting his head. He was wiping his pistol with a rag stained with some machine oil, occasionally breathing on it.

“Alright, I’ve introduced your four crew members to you. Should I introduce you, or will you do it yourself?” Captain Carter asked after finishing his rounds. He walked back to the door and smiled at the little boy who, in his eyes, was not yet an adult.

“I’ll do it myself. We all have to say our first words,” the small boy said, taking a step forward and putting his hands behind his back. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. My name is Rein! Rein Hardt. I just graduated from the Berlin Greater German Panzer Command Academy with the rank of sergeant. I hope we can get along well! If any of you have any questions, you can raise them to my face!”

“Hey, Sergeant Rein! How old are you?” Bruce, who seemed to be the most talkative, asked with a mischievous grin.

“I am eighteen years old. My nineteenth birthday is in a few months,” Sergeant Rein replied with a smile.

“Don’t you think you’re a little young to be commanding us?” Bruce continued, raising his eyebrows. As he spoke, his large mouth opened wide, and his beard trembled like steel needles.

“Actually, the commander of tank 112 in the next dormitory is half a year younger than me,” Rein said as if he hadn’t noticed Bruce’s mockery. “Our class graduated thirty-two tank commanders, all of whom have been assigned to frontline units. It’s a pity I only know seven people in this division, and only one is over twenty.”

“Sigh… a baby soldier commanding us. He’ll get us killed!” Bruce wailed with a sigh.

“Bruce, shut up!” Andre, the gunner who had been silent until now, looked up and said in a low, cold voice. He then frowned and stared at Rein, who was still smiling. He finally holstered the pistol hanging by his bed, stood up, and walked out of the corner. Due to the light, Rein could finally see that this man named Andre had very nice brown hair.

“You said you graduated from the Greater German Panzer Command Academy?” Andre asked, his eyes fixed on Rein as he walked up to the short sergeant. “I heard there’s a very formidable ‘Youth Class’ there. Are you from that class?”

Rein glanced at Andre and then suddenly burst into a hearty laugh. “Oh! You mean Wolf Rider Class One! Yes, I was in that class!”

As he spoke, he proudly pointed to a commemorative medal on his chest and showed it off happily. “I graduated first in my class.”

Looking at the smiling boy with light freckles on his face, Andre let out a breath, turned, and sat back down on his bunk, lying down casually. “The bunk over there with the curtain is yours. The key to your number one locker is under the pillow.”

He was clearly the boss of this dormitory. After he said this, Bruce, who had been about to say something more, opened and closed his large mouth for a while but didn’t dare to say another word to taunt Rein.

Captain Carter, seeing that the arrangement for Rein had gone relatively smoothly, turned to leave. But at that moment, Rein seemed to have remembered something.

He scratched the back of his head with some embarrassment and called out to Captain Carter, who had brought him here. “Captain! I haven’t gotten my toiletries yet… and… and my sergeant’s dress uniform. I forgot it at the academy. Could you let me make a phone call to the school?”

He followed Carter out, but halfway there, he turned back and called out, “I’ll be right back! Let’s go to the mess hall together!”

Then he chased Captain Carter down the corridor. “Captain! When do we usually get leave? What day is payday? Can I leave the barracks on my own time?…” His voice gradually faded away, disappearing at the end of the corridor.

“Hehe. He’s still a kid,” Clark, the one with the glasses, said, pushing up the glasses that had slipped down his nose and smiling as he straightened his bunk.

The driver, Baumann, shrugged, threw the uniform that was haphazardly draped over him onto the bed, then grabbed a towel hanging on the wall, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out with his washbasin.

“Are we really going to wait for him to come back before going to the mess hall?” the bearded Bruce asked, turning to look at Andre, the boss of the room. He saw that Andre had already stood up and was walking toward the door, and he hurriedly shouted, “I say! Hey! Hey! Where are you going?”

“I’m going to eat,” Andre replied without looking back.

Rein, having returned late, naturally missed dinner. After first returning to the dormitory and finding it empty, he had dropped his luggage and run to the mess hall, only to be met with two cold potatoes.

But Rein still hummed a little tune as he walked back to his dormitory door. He carefully hung the towel embroidered with his name on an empty nail on the wall, then placed his aluminum toothbrush cup and a not-so-good-quality toothbrush directly below the towel.

Next, he placed a thick Russian dictionary by his pillow and took out a book titled “Analysis of Russian Grammar” from his large cloth bag, tossing it casually onto his bunk. Then, he unbuckled his crooked web belt and hung it on his bedpost. Only then did he sit on the edge of the bed, take off his boots, and change into his small slippers.

Just as the other four men in the dormitory were marveling at the rather professional-looking, thick Russian dictionary on the bunk, Rein, holding the “Analysis of Russian Grammar,” casually placed the book over his face. Without even pulling the curtain by his bed, he began to snore lightly and fell into a dream.

Everyone felt a little guilty for their earlier thoughts. Then, they returned to their four-person routine. About half an hour later, the sky gradually darkened. Because the barracks was undergoing large-scale expansion and the military budget had always been tight, there were no electric lights here yet, and the supply of kerosene for the lamps was sporadic, so everyone went to bed early.

“Hey, Andre!” Bruce, the most talkative one, flicked his extinguished cigarette butt at the boss opposite him. “That ‘Greater German Panzer Academy Youth Class’ you mentioned during the day, the place our baby commander was in… is it really that good?”

Andre brushed the cigarette butt off his blanket and onto the floor. He stared intently at the pendant on the necklace in his hand and replied, “It’s the tank training academy personally established by the Führer under General Guderian’s command. I always wanted to go but couldn’t pass the exam. I heard Wolf Rider Class One is the toughest and most rigorously trained class there. It’s filled with orphans from German orphanages, personally trained by General Heydrich. What do you think?”

“So we’ve struck gold?” Clark, who had been listening with pricked-up ears, chimed in. “And he was first in his class there, too!”

Baumann turned over, the movement so large that his bunk creaked with his twisting. He was clearly not asleep and was listening to his comrades, but he apparently had no intention of joining in.

“A rookie is still a rookie! I’m not entrusting my life to an eighteen-year-old kid!” Andre said, clutching the pendant in his hand tighter. He glanced at the bright white moonlight outside the window.

On Rein’s boyish face, covered by the book, was a faint smile. He was still snoring lightly, having what seemed to be a very sweet dream, completely unaware that his subordinates were judging him.