We had been on the same train for several days, ever since leaving the front, and we had stopped at many stations. Frequently we had been shunted into sidings and left there for hours on end, to make way for trains carrying more important cargoes – arms or ammunitions, perhaps. We were only soldiers returning home, and therefore fairly far down on the list of priorities.
Now, on the seventh day of our journey, we had come to yet another stop. The train shuddered to a halt and for several minutes we stayed where we were, sitting on the straw in our cattle truck, too lethargic even to open our eyes. After a while, Porta stirred himself sufficiently to pull open the sliding door and have a look outside.
‘Hamburg!’ He turned back to the rest of us. ‘We’re in Hamburg!’
‘Hamburg?
We cheered up slightly. The Legionnaire stretched luxuriously and the Old Man was moved to pull out his pipe and stick it in his mouth.
‘It’s Whitsun,’ he told us, suddenly.
We all looked at him.
‘So what?’ said Heide. ‘What’s Whitsun got to do with anything?’
The Old Man shrugged his shoulders.
‘I don’t know . . . it just occurred to me . . .’
‘This time last year,’ said Porta, ‘we were at Demnanks.’
‘And the year before that,’ added Tiny, ‘it was Brest-Lit-ovsk. Do you remember Brest-Litovsk? Do you remember—’
‘Put a sock in it!’ said the Legionnaire, irritably. ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep looking backwards all the time, it’s morbid and unnecessary. Why can’t you try looking forward for a change?’
‘All right, if that’s what you want . . .’ Porta closed his eyes a moment, and a smile of beatific lechery appeared on his lips. ‘First thing I do tonight, when they let us out of here, is find me a brothel . . . How about that? That appeal to you?’
From the cheers, that went up from the assembled company, it seemed that it did!
CHAPTER THREE
Hamburg
WE were sitting in the canteen, waiting for Barcelona. We had been sitting in there for some time, and one or two of us –notably Porta and Tiny – were well on the way to becoming exceedingly, gloriously drunk.
The place smelt of stale beer and frying, and the air was thick and heavy with cigarette smoke. The serving women, rushed off their feet and in no very good mood, were deliberately making as much noise as possible, throwing piles of knives and forks into the sink and clattering the crockery on the draining board. They grumbled incessantly as they worked.
Porta, prompted by God knows what drunken whim, suddenly leaned across the table and pointed an accusing finger at a Dutch SS man, who had been sitting in a peaceful coma, minding his own business, ever since we had been there.
‘Look at the ugly great swine,’ he said, his voice slightly blurred by drink. He turned to the rest of us, and with a gesture invited us to inspect the unfortunate man. ‘Look at his sodding great ears! If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s ears that look as if they’re about to take off.’
I stared with interest at the man’s ears. They certainly had a tendency to stand out at right angles from his head, but perhaps I hadn’t yet drunk enough to see this as sufficient reason for pitching into him.
A girl came up with a tray of beer mugs. She slapped them down before us, and the beer frothed over the edge and made a great stinking lake over the table. Porta planted both elbows in it and turned his attentions to more likely prey, a young soldier wearing the silver insignia of the SD7 on his collar. The Dutch SS man had remained totally unmoved by the reference to his ears, and was probably even more drunk than Porta, but the young soldier was already looking nervous.
‘Listen, you bastard—’ Porta blew his nose loudly between finger and thumb and wiped it across his sleeve – ‘I got a knife here. We all got knives. Me and my friends, we all got knives . . . You know what for? You know what we use ’em for?’
The SD man turned away and wisely kept his mouth shut, but Porta was out to annoy someone and he dragged the man round to face him again.
‘You want me to show you?’ he asked, with a revolting leer. ‘We use ’em for cutting things off . . . You want me to show you what it is we cut off?’
He made an obscene gesture in the air, and Tiny obligingly guffawed.
‘Really, I’m not in the least interested in your wretched knives,’ said the man, and he yawned and turned away again.
His attempt to assume an air of lofty disdainmerely provoked Porta into a drunken fury. He brought his fist crashing down on to the table. All the beer mugs jumped and rattled and a fresh wave of beer came slopping over the edge.
‘Why don’t you bugger off and leave us alone?’ shouted Porta. ‘What right have you got to sit here at our table, you filthy swine? Get out of it before I throw you out!’
I picked up my half empty beer mug and watched the scene unfold with a fuddled, and consequently somewhat dispassionate, interest. The Legionnaire leaned back and crossed his legs at the ankle, sliding half out of his chair. The Old Man was staring mournfully into his beer mug. Tiny seemed the only other person to be really very much interested.
The SD man voiced what seemed to me, in the circumstances, a mild and reasonable objection to Porta’s rude hectoring.
‘I was here first, you know . . . And I really don’t think it’s up to you to give the orders.’
Porta snorted and spat.
‘So what if you’ve been here since the beginning of the bleeding war? I’m telling you, now, to get the hell out of it!’
‘And I’m telling you,’ retorted the SD man, growing pardonably exasperated, ‘that I shall do no such thing!’
Porta looked round wildly at Tiny for support.
‘Insubordination! You heard that, did you? Refusing to obey’ the orders of a Stabsgefreiter!’ He staggered to his feet, thrust out an arm and pushed it under the man’s nose. ‘You see that?’ He jabbed a finger at his stripes. ‘You know what they mean, I suppose?’
The SD merely took hold of the arm between finger and thumb and delicately swung it back towards Porta, screwing up his nose as if he could smell a bad smell – which he most likely could.
‘Well, bugger me!’ cried Porta, growing ever more excited. ‘If that don’t beat all! You see that, did you?’ He turned again to Tiny, who nodded eagerly and pushed back his chair. ‘Make a note of it! Take his name and number! He used violence on a Stabsgefreiter . . . Go on, get it wrote down!’
‘Fuck off,’ said Tiny, sullenly. ‘You know I can’t bleeding write.’
‘Then take him outside and beat the living daylights out of him!’
‘Look here, you uncouth bastard–’
The SD man rose to his feet, and Tiny rose with him. They faced each other across the table. Tiny scratched his enormous chest, hitched up his trousers, reached out a hand and closed it over the man’s collar. ,
‘Come on, little one . . . let’s go talk outside.’
The SD man opened his mouth to shout, but such was the pressure of Tiny’s vast paw that only a strangulated squawk came out. Tiny frogmarched him to the door and Porta sat down again, red in the face and still angry.
The Dutch SS man was now lying across the table with his head in a pool of beer.
‘Look at that,’ I said, to the Legionnaire. ‘He’s passed out.’
And I laughed hilariously, as if it were the funniest thing in the whole world. The Legionnaire, who rarely if ever lost control, merely smiled pityingly at me.
A few moments later, Tiny reappeared – alone.
‘Where’s he gone?’ I said.
‘Lying in the gutter,’ said Tiny. He sent his fist crashing into the palm of his hand and winked at me. ‘Out like a light first go . . . Hey!’ He looked round at the Legionnaire. ‘You remember the day you and me first met?’
‘I remember,’ said the Legionnaire.
‘What happened?’ I asked, just sufficiently drunk to be obliging and give Tin
y the chance to show off.
By way of reply, he grabbed my hand as if to shake it in normal greeting and slowly began crushing it until I gave a loud yell of pain.
‘That’s what happened,’ said Tiny, proudly.
‘Very amusing,’ I said, shaking my hand up and down. “What’s the point of it?’
‘Ah,’ said Tiny, winking. ‘That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’
The Legionnaire gave one of his patronizing smiles and shook his head at me.
‘Allow him his little moment of glory,’ he murmured.
‘Well, that’s what happened!’ protested Tiny.
‘Of course it is,’ agreed the Legionnaire, smoothly. ‘But never again, my friend! I don’t get caught twice the same way!’
‘Nor me,’ I grumbled, tucking my injured hand beneath my armpit.
Porta was banging on the table again, calling loudly and lewdly for more beer. The girls just sniffed and turned their backs on him, but Big Helga, the superintendent, left her place behind the counter and came storming over to our table. She placed herself before Porta, legs apart and arms akimbo, her vast body a mass of indignant ripples.
‘How dare you call my girls by such names? What do you think this is, a brothel?’
‘Brothel, my anus!’ retorted Porta. ‘With a scabby crew like that? Times might be hard, darling, but nobody’s that desperate!’
‘I shall report you,’ said Big Helga, as she said many times a day to many different soldiers. ‘We do a good job here, and I’d like to know where you lot would be without us.’
‘I could tell you,’ said Porta.
Big Helga took a step away from him.
‘They’re all good girls here, and Gertrude, let me tell you, has a boyfriend in the SD. If there’s any more lip from you people I shall have her report you.’
‘Ah, stop bellyaching!’ said Tiny. ‘You know you love us, really.’
‘All we want is some more beer,’ I added. ‘Anyone’d think we’d asked for six whores, the way she’s carrying on.’
Big Helga just sniffed and went back to the counter. She picked out Gerda, the least attractive of a rather poor bunch, and grudgingly sent her over to us with the order. Gerda wasn’t a bad girl, but they didn’t call her ‘Beanstick’ for nothing. She was the nearest thing to an animated telegraph pole I ever saw.
‘If you only had a bit more bum on you, I’d be almost tempted to take you to bed with me,’ murmured Tiny, regretfully sliding a hand up Gerda’s skirt and trying to feel her non-existent bottom.
Gerda showed what she thought of this invitation by slamming the Tiny’s hard on to Tray’s head and stalking away again.
At this point we were rejoined by Barcelona, who brought the unwelcome news that we were on guard duty as from that evening.
Barcelona was wearing an enormous bandage round his neck, which obliged him to hold his head stiff and straight. During our last days in the mountains he had been wounded in the throat by a stray hand grenade, and he had now been temporarily exempted from active service. He could, and should, have stayed in hospital, but thanks to Lt. Ohlsen pulling a few strings he had been allowed to come back to the Company and take up duty in the orderly room – not that he was very often to be found in the orderly room. He was more frequently in the canteen or the armoury.
There were people who thought he was a fool for not having taken advantage of a few months’ rest in hospital, but Barcelona had been in the Army long enough to know that once in hospital and separated from your comrades almost anything was liable to happen to you on your discharge. The chances of being sent back to your own company were remote, and in these days of the war it was almost certain death to be the newcomer in an established group of people. All the worst and most dangerous tasks would automatically come your way, and death seemed to be a foregone conclusion.
‘Jesus!’ said Barcelona, looking at the table with its array of beer mugs. ‘You’ve been packing it away, haven’t you?’?
‘Never mind that,’ said Porta. ‘What I want to know is, where we’re supposed to be on guard duty . . . I wouldn’t mind the local brothel—’
‘No such luck.’ Barcelona shook his head and picked up someone’s beer mug. ‘It’s the perishing Gestapo.’
‘What fool thought that one up?’ demanded the Legionnaire.
Barcelona hunched a shoulder and threw a sheet of paper on to the table. The Old Man prised it up from a pool of beer and looked at it indifferently.
‘Nineteen hundred hours . . . Place Karl Muck, Hamburg . . .’
Gloomily he folded the paper and put it in his top pocket Steiner came suddenly to life and glared at Barcelona as if he personally had made the arrangements.
‘Bloody Gestapo!’
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Barcelona. ‘I’m not the clown who thought it up . . . Anyway, just thank your lucky stars it’s nothing worse. The Fourth Section’s on duty at Fuhlsbiittel . . . execution squad for the Wehrmacht.’
‘I wouldn’t mind swopping,’ said Tiny, perverse as ever. ‘There’s always the chance of picking up a bit of extra lolly on executions. We’ve done it before now, let’s face it . . .’
‘How?’ demanded Stege, suspiciously. ‘How have you done it?’
‘Easy. You promise some guy his life and he’s willing to give you anything you ask for.’
‘You mean you’d take money from a condemned man?’ said Stege, sounding as if he could hardly believe his ears.
‘Well, and why not?’ said Tiny, aggressively. Tou’d be willing to pay someone for getting you off the hook, I bet.’
‘Any case,’ added Porta, ‘it ain’t that easy. They find out what you’re up to and you’d be for the high jump yourself.’
Stege opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak Heide had woken from a deep sleep and found himself confronted by a solid wall of empty beer mugs. He swept them away, angrily.
‘We’ve drunk too much!’ He belched and reached out for the nearest full mug. ‘How did we get through all that lot?’
‘Beside the point,’ said Tiny. ‘We did, and that’s all that matters . . . apart from the fact that it’s you what’s going to pay for them. You’re the only one with money.’
‘Me? I’m broke!’ said Heide, at once.
‘Like hell! You’ve got a whole wad stuck down the inside of your boot!’
Heide looked at him incredulously.
‘How do you know that?’
Tiny shrugged his shoulders.
‘I had a look, didn’t I? I wanted some money the other day, so I went through your cupboard. It’s the only one with a faulty lock, you ought to get it looked at. Doesn’t close right, you see.’
‘You mean you deliberately went through my things?’
‘Yeah. I suppose you could put it that way.’
‘So it was you nicked that 100 marks?’
‘Now, look,’ said Tiny, ‘just watch it, mate. I never said I took nothing, did I?’
‘But it’s bloody obvious you did!’
Tiny sneered.
‘Try and prove it!’
‘I don’t have to prove it! You’ve as good as admitted it . . . By God, you’re not going to get away with this!’ warned Heide, his face sheet white with rage. ‘I’ll see you in Torgau if it’s the last thing I ever do. I’ll see you hang for this. I’ll see you—’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said the Legionnaire, languidly, ‘does it really matter?’
‘It does to me!’ snarled Heide.
‘Look here,’ said Porta, as if suddenly possessed of an idea that would solve the entire problem, ‘why don’t we take a few bottles of booze on duty with us? Old Beanstick wouldn’t mind slipping them to us under the counter.’
‘Yeah? And what do we do with ’em when we get to Karl Muck?’
‘Stash ’em away somewhere safe. It’s O.K. I know one of the boys that’s been on guard duty there just recently, he says it’s a real doddle of a place. Right down in the ce
llars, like. Nobody ever bothers to come and take a look at what you’re doing.’
‘What about the cells?’ Steiner wanted to know.
‘What about them? None of the prisoners ain’t never there for more than one night. Most of ’em are got rid of the following morning. The ones the Gestapo want to pull about a bit, they take up top with ’em. More convenient. Saves ’em running up and down the stairs every time they feel like yanking a few finger nails out . . . You don’t want to worry about the cells. The prisoners won’t bother us none.’
‘How about that statue of the Emperor on his horse?’ suggested Heide suddenly forgetting his hundred marks and taking an interest in Porta’s idea. ‘The legs are hollow. I bet you could stuff quite a few bottles up there and no one’d notice.’
‘I already thought of that,’ claimed Tiny. ‘I was just about to say it myself. I always think of good places for hiding things in . . . That’s why I looked in your boots that time,’ he confided to Heide, who at once relapsed into fierce sulks.
‘We’ll get half a dozen large bottles,’ decided Porta. We’ll have a mixture.’ He beckoned to Gerda, who peeled herself away from the side of the counter and suspiciously approached us. ‘Six bottles,’ he told her. ‘Dortmunder up to there—’ He showed her with fingers and thumb held apart – ‘and the rest, Slibowitz. That O.K.?’
She shrugged.
‘If you say so. I shouldn’t fancy it myself, but there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes, is there?’
She turned away with a sniff, and Porta rubbed his hands together and looked towards the Legionnaire for confirmation.
‘That’s right, ain’t it? Put the beer in first, then the Slibowitz?’
The Legionnaire inclined his head, an expression of faint amusement on his face, as if he were watching a crowd of children.
Gerda came back with the first bottle, shaking it vigorously to mix the two liquids. Porta snatched it from her, horrified.
‘What the bleeding hell are you trying to do? Blow us all up?’
‘With any luck,’ she said, sourly.
She brought the rest of the bottles, banged them noisily on to the table and silently held out her hand for the money. She stood there counting it and checking every bank note to make sure it was not a forgery. While she was doing so, Steiner came out of the bog. He stood by the table, belching and doing up his flies, regardless of Gerda still counting her money.