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reflex action.
    At the barricade the soldier fell. Backwards. As if pushed by an invisible fist.
    Warily Willi got up. He ran down to the fallen soldier. He looked at him, the bile rising in his throat, burning it.
    A tiny figure in a uniform two sizes too large for him. A boy. His downy, grimy cheeks still wet with the streaks of tears. His dead eyes looking at his killer with a child’s surprise. And around his neck an Iron Cross. Second Class.
    There was a sound behind him. Footsteps. Hurrying. He whirled on them, automatically falling to one knee, his P-38 locked before him.
    There were six or seven of them. All elderly men clad in a mixture of uniforms and civilian clothes. But the red armbands with the black stripe and white letters— DEUTSCHER VOLKSSTURM WEHRMACHT— and the two Hoheitsabzeichen— the German eagle with the swastika—worn on their sleeves proclaimed who they were. The people’s army. The defenders of Berlin. Along with the boys.
    Willi rose as they walked up to him. “I am Obersturmführer Lüttjohann,” he snapped. “Report!”
    One of the men stepped forward. “I am Brauner,” he said, “Alois Brauner.” He stared at the dead boy. “You—you killed him,” he said tonelessly. “Little Wolfgang. You—killed him . . .’’
    “He fired on me,” Willi said curtly. He was surprised how harsh his voice sounded. “He blew up my motorcycle with a Panzerfaust. Damn near killed me!”
    Brauner did not hear him. He knelt down beside the dead boy. With infinite sadness he closed the questioning eyes. Gently he touched the Iron Cross.
    “Only a week ago,” he said quietly. “On the Führer’s birthday, it was. The Führer himself gave him this. In the garden of the Reichschancellery.” He looked up at Willi, accusingly. “For destroying a Russian tank.”
    “I did not know he was just a boy,” Willi said defensively. “He fired at me. I called to him—but he fired at me. I had no choice. His bullets would have killed me just as damned dead as if he’d been your age!”
    The men all stared at him. Brauner stood up.
    “He was frightened,” he said wearily. “Just as he was when that Russian tank suddenly came around the corner and bore down on him. Up near Moabit, it was. The boy froze. He could not run. He just stood there. Watching the tank. Coming closer and closer. I was there. I saw it. Then suddenly he threw away the Panzerfaust he had been holding and ran. The Russian tank kept coming. It ran over the charge—and it exploded. It blew off a track.” He looked down at the boy. “Wolfgang got the Iron Cross. Second Class. I—I guess he was trying to live up to it.”
    Willi was suddenly angry. “And what the hell was he doing here? Alone? On a military roadblock. A child! Where the devil were you?”
    Brauner peered nearsightedly at him. “The Russians are still many blocks from here,” he said tiredly. “We haven’t slept for days.” He sighed. “They—they sent us a couple of boys from the Hitler Youth to—to . . .” He let the sentence trail off.
    “He was alone,” Willi said.
    Brauner nodded. “There were two of them,” he said, not really caring whether the SS officer believed him or not. “The other one, Helmuth, must have run off. Home, I guess . . .”
    He looked at the tiny, still form of Wolfgang Schiller, Fähnleinsführer in the Hitler Youth. “Wolfgang,” he said. “He stood his ground. This time.” He looked at Willi. “And you—killed him . . .”
    Willi glared contemptuously at the Volksstürmer. “ His blood is on your hands, old man,” he growled. “ You live with it!”
    Angrily he turned on his heel and stalked off. He had to make it on foot to the Reichschancellery. It would take time. Children, he thought bleakly. Children and old men. Frightened children and foolish old men, neither of whom should be concerned with the harsh realities of war.
    He disappeared into the blackened ruins.
    Behind him, sprawled in death, lay Wolfgang