The driver sighed with relief when he felt the road firm at last under the wheels.
The Commander wrapped three blankets around him, pushed his feet into lambswool footwarmers, and pulled the fur collar of his great-coat up around his ears. A German Oberst didn’t allow himself to become cold. He leaned back comfortably. He had time to take a nap. He would hand over the Regiment to Obersleutnant Reuff and then back to Division and a real bed. Now the war would become a more pleasant affair. The Oberst felt that he deserved some refreshment. He took a long deep pull at his cognac flask.
Poor General Weil, he thought. He never saw Moscow. Now he, Oberst Gabelsberg, would lead the Division on to the Kremlin. He would be a General several years ahead of time. This wasn’t such a bad war after all.
In the same instant a terrible explosion blew the Kübel into a thousand flying pieces. The bodies of the Oberst, his adjutant, and the driver were blown into the air and fell to drive deeply into the mud.
Shadowy figures disappeared quickly into the forest. The partisans had been laying mines.
6 | The Meat Depot
The Hauptfeldwebel sits staring stiffly in front of him. His arms are lying across the desk. He is wearing a fur-lined winter great-coat and a beautiful astrakhan cap decorates his large square head.
Porta and Tiny salute smartly, report their arrival, smash their heels together three times, raise their right arms stiffly in the Nazi salute and march noisily towards the Hauptfeldwebel. They grasp him firmly under the arms, lift him from his chair and send him flying in a beautiful curve straight through the window. He falls and remains in a sitting position in the snow. He looks so natural that two infantrymen salute him smartly as they pass by.
Porta and Tiny go through everything in the mobile office snatching up rubber stamps and blank forms. By the time they leave they are equipped with passes, stamps, and tickets enough to send a whole regiment on a sight-seeing tour of Europe five times over. They are already well past the frozen Hauptfeldwebel when Tiny stops as if struck by lightning.
‘What the hell’s wrong?’ asks Porta nervously.
‘I’m afraid you an’ me must be gettin’ old,’ answers Tiny, shaking his head worriedly. ‘We forgot to look if ol’ fatguts ’ad any gold in ’is chops!’
Without a word they go back to the body and tip it on its back.
A gun-muzzle between the teeth and a quick operation and Porta is in possession of two gold teeth.
‘You’ve got to keep your wits about you when you’re in a war,’ he explains. ‘There’s valuables all around us. Old fatguts sits there and lets himself freeze to death. There was even ice in his mouth. Probably deliberate, to keep honest people like us from finding the gold in ’em.’
‘Reckon we’re gonna leave the army rich men?’ smiles Tiny, putting the bag of teeth carefully into his breast pocket.
‘No doubt about it,’ Porta assures him. ‘We went into this dam’ war piss-poor but we’ll get out of it rich as a couple of Jew gold-dealers and dressed up in tailor-mades with officer’s boots shining like shit on a slate.’
‘Think we’ll get to be officers?’ asks Tiny sceptically.
‘No, I wouldn’t consider it probable, but I wouldn’t consider it improbable either. In the service of God and Prussia anything’s possible!’
‘I wouldn’t ’alf like the chance of bein’ some kind of Oberst,’ Tiny grins with a revengeful glint in his eyes. ‘Best’d be one of them big guns on the General Staff with the rosy-coloured stripes down their strides. I’d ’ave Hauptfeldwebel bleedin’ ’Ofman crawlin’ on ’is gut in pigshit eight hours a day. An’ Julius soddin’ ’Eide up in the ’ighest tree in the forest with orders to shout “Sieg”, “Heil”, from dawn to bleedin’ dusk. With ’is gas-mask on, too!’
‘You don’t have to be more than a Leutnant to do that,’ states Porta, ’and you’ll make that quicker than you’ll make Oberst. Learn to quote regulations backwards and forwards and you’ll be a sword swallower before you even know it.’
‘I can’t ’ardly read, mate!’ mumbles Tiny bitterly.
‘Get some slave or other to teach you. Never admit you can’t read. They won’t believe you. They’ll send you to the Gestapo and they’ll rip pieces off you with red-hot tongs until you admit you can read. In the Party Programme it says all Germans can read, and you’re a German that you can’t deny. It’s a kind of curse. If you can get it removed you get the right to shave the Devil’s backside with a blunt razor blade!’
‘I’ve never been proud of bein’ born in the bleedin’ Reich,’ admits Tiny sourly. ‘If I’da bin born somewhere else at least I wouldn’t ’ave ’ad to go round with this barmy bleedin’ bird on me bosom. I never could stand poultry!’
‘What’s that?’ asks Porta suddenly and points to a large white sign.
They scrape the snow from it. Porta has finished reading it long before Tiny has even started spelling it out.
3rd ARMY CORPS
SUPPLY DEPOT
ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN
WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION
‘This is something we must look into,’ considers Porta.
‘Long as they don’t try to make ’oles in us,’ says Tiny cautiously.
‘I ain’t got much time for these salami supermen. They get trigger-finger itch when they see strange faces sniffing around their bleedin’ larders.’
‘Dry your eyes, son! If Moses could lead a tribe of Yids through the Red Sea with old Pharaoh’s Panzer divisions snapping at their butts then two of our kind can take over a German sausage depot with one hand tied behind us. Keep your trap shut and let me do the talking. Look like tough-nut SS-man with your left hand on your pistol-holster as if it’d grown there, and your old persuader under your right arm with one finger on the trigger.’
‘Shall I open up?’ asks Tiny happily cocking his submachine-gun.
‘Jesus Christ, no!’ shouts Porta. ‘The salami’s would be crazy enough to fire back at us. We’ve got to get ’em paralysed with fright first, so no matter what they say to you, you just growl like a gorilla and roll your eyes. We’ll do ’em the way we did the railways when we scared ’em into handing us over a locomotive.’
‘Got it!’ glows Tiny happily. ‘think them iron ’orse cowboys are still sittin’ in the clink?’
‘I certainly hope so,’ says Porta. ‘If they’re not we’re wanted by everybody, from the International Police to the Salvation Army.’
‘To ’ell with ’em,’ grins Tiny unworriedly. ‘The International Police ain’t comin’ to Russia while this weather lasts. It’s too big an’ it’s too bleedin’ cold.’
Ich hab’ mich ergeben mit Herz und mit Hand dir,
land voll Lieb und Leben,
mein Deutsches Vaterland.
Mein Herz ist englommen, dir treu zugewandt,
du Land der freien Frommen,
du herrlich Herrmannsland.1
they sing as they march towards the Army Depot.
‘Look around you, Obergefreiter Creutzfeldt,’ says Porta and throws out his hand with a lordly gesture as if it all belonged to him.
After two hours marching they are inside the perimeter wire surrounding the enormous depot, a former Russian military camp.
They saunter calmly around getting the lay-out of the depot, until suddenly a Feldwebel blocks their path.
He is about the size of an anti-tank barrier.
‘What the hell are you two piss-ants doing here?’ he yells waving his Mpi in the air. “Don’t you fucked-up sons-of-bitches know this is out of bounds to scum like you?’
Porta straddles in front of him. Tiny, a stony-faced giant, stands directly behind him. He dips at the knees, down and up in SS fashion, and spits, narrowly missing the Feldwebel’s boots.
‘Listen to me you son of a blown-up bitch that dropped her miscarriage in a sewer. I’m looking for a Soviet turd I can fill your cock-sucking mouth with before I put you on the next train to Iron Gustav at Torgau you sow-bellied
lump of striped shit. Message ended!’
The Feldwebel was only a soldier, and that is a terrible thing to be. He didn’t know what to do. Scream at them or slink off quietly. One thing he did know. An Obergefreiter who dared to throw a mouthful like that at a serving Feldwebel was no ordinary Obergefreiter. He decided to slink away.
‘See,’ explains Porta to Tiny as they saunter on around the strictly out of bounds depot area. ‘Use the language of an alley whore and they shut up. In ten seconds from now all the salami bosses’ll be shitting themselves with fright. They’ll fall apart like jerry-built war memorials built on sand. Now we’ll show these kaffirs that we’re in no hurry!’
‘Like the Gestapo ’untin’ people on a dark night,’ shouts Tiny and bends over whooping with laughter.
‘That’s it exactly,’ smiles Porta appreciatively. ‘You’re not as dumb as you look.’
‘What’re we doin’ ’ere anyway?’ asks Tiny a little later. ‘Why’re we goin’ to all this trouble to frighten the shit outa these bleedin’ sausage-miners?’
Porta stops in his tracks and gazes at Tiny with an appearance of undisguised wonder.
‘Obergefreiter Wolfgang Ewald Creutzfeldt aren’t you hungry?’
‘I’m always ‘ungry,’ admits Tiny. ‘I’ve never yet been that full up I couldn’t eat more.’
‘We are now in the middle of the Army’s kitchen, and you ask me what we’re doing here?’ shouts Porta reprovingly. ‘We’re foraging, Creutzfeldt, and, since we are not in possession of a legitimate requisition form, we must make use of other means.’
‘Terror!’ grins Tiny slitting his eyes.
The camp telephone wires glow. The rumour spreads with the speed of a forest fire. A secret spot-check! A panic of works runs through the depot. Hidden tinned stores appear on the shelves again. Weighted scales are readjusted. Erasers work overtime on the books. Five ‘lost’ lorries suddenly appear, readied for delivery. The shelves in the almost empty fur depot fill up again in record time.
Watchful eyes follow the two ‘auditors’ movements through the snow-covered streets. It almost ends in catastrophe when they stop at the Petrol Depot and Tiny fills his lighter.
The WO1/c the Petrol Depot snatches his ready packed duffel bag and disappears through the back door into his three-axled Mercedes.
Nobody feels safe. The Feldwebel in charge of the bread store has swallowed an entire jar of nerve pills and smoked a whole packet of Gribas.
‘An audit without warning is worse for these boys than getting a dose,’ remarks Porta pointing to a nervous group of supply soldiers who have been sent out with brooms in their hands to act as observers. Most of them relax as the two mystery men enter the Meat Depot. They are not unhappy to see that it is Stabsfeldwebel Brumme who is to have the pleasure of this unexpected visit.
‘God is good to us!’ cries the baker, Feldwebel Willinsky, happily.
‘The fat bastard’ll get his arse in the slicer now for sure! Did you see that thin red-haired chap who seems to be in charge? He stinks of Gestapo a mile away! Christ Almighty, my piles nearly dried up when he looked at me. He’s one of the toughs they use to keep the mill going. Those uniforms can’t hide it. They’re SS-officers in disguise.’
Supplies Stabsfeldwebel Brumme is the only man in the Army Depot who has not been advised of the arrival of the two disguised Gestapo auditors.
‘It’s all up with him,’ promises Feldwebel Willinsky gleefully. ‘They’ll drag him away in irons before long! Maybe they’ll liquidate him out on the parade-ground,’ he adds, hopefully.
Porta and Tiny step into a huge room, where countless slaughtered carcasses hang in rows from hooks.
‘Where’s your chief?’ demands Porta, in an inquisitorical manner, of an overfat Unteroffizier, who is sitting on a stool biting into a liver sausage of unheard of dimensions. Fat is running down over his neck.
With cold, fishy eyes he examines the two strangers and comes to the decision that they are not worth answering. Condescendingly he points the liver sausage towards a door at the far end of the slaughter-house.
With a lightning motion Tiny snatches the sausage from his hand stuffs it into his own huge mouth and swallows it with the speed and elegance of an anaconda despatching a pig.
‘Don’t cry, sonny,’ he advises him. ‘You look for all the world like a dopy tourist lookin’ at the Eiffel Tower! Your banger’s gone an’ even if it come back up again you wouldn’t like it any more. So don’t cry over spilt sausage! If it’ll make you ’appy son, it tasted real good! It was a good sausage!’
‘Good work!’ praises Porta. ‘Now this pot-bellied porker knows better than to wave a sausage about like that. Besides which he’s been taught how to answer a polite question. Where shall we send him? Glatz or Torgau?’2
‘Germersheim’s better,’ considers Tiny, belching between each word. The Unteroffizier looks at them with a foolish expression on his face. The look of a backward child or a chronic imbecile. He manages, however, to throw a good-sized bone after Tiny, as the door to the Depot Office bangs behind them.
Supplies Stabsfeldwebel Brumme is not a small man. A good seven inches over six feet, with a chest like a carthorse. Set in his huge completely bald head are a pair of unbelievably wicked little eyes blazing like searchlights on each side of a flattened purple nose.
He is lying stretched out on a cutting board with a blue cushion under his bull neck, prizing around with a bayonet after a piece of meat stuck between two of his teeth.
Almost ten minutes go by before he condescends to notice the presence of the two strangers.
‘What you two maggots want?’ he asks with the air of a conceited prosecutor.
‘Just a short talk, Herr Stabsfeldwebel,’ grins Porta cheekily, calmly choosing a steak from a dish standing on a small wheeled table beside the grossly fat Stabsfeldwebel. ‘I’ve been told you’re a good sort of man and you like to help your friends.’
Brumme lifts himself on one elbow and spits out a great mouthful of meat which lands with a slap under the photograph of the Führer. He glares suspiciously for a moment at Porta, turns his wicked coals of eyes on Tiny, and then falls back on the cutting-board with a roar of laughter.
‘Now I’ve heard everything,’ he yells in a beery bass. ‘The maggots’ll be crawling up to Stabsfeldwebel Brumme for extra next! Who sent you two red-arsed monkeys to me? Must’ve been somebody who hated your guts and wanted to get rid of you. Even the bugs don’t come interrupting my rest-hour. Don’t you two underdeveloped bastards know that? Write it down in case you’re absent-minded: I’m not a good fellow who does things for his friends. I ain’t got any friends. I’m the Devil himself!’
With a bound he springs from the table and pushes a giant fist in front of Porta’s nose, so closely that he has to move his head to see round it.
‘Take a sniff of that!’ he orders with a harsh cackle of laughter.
‘When we got no more tanks left I’ll be out there smashing them fucked-up T-34s flat with one punch from this!’
‘It’s big,’ admits Porta unimpressed, ‘but as you may not be aware, dad, nobody ever won a war by effing and blinding and waving his dirty great fists in the air! We had a block-commander at Germersheim, Leutnant Liebe, who could hide a well-grown alley cat in his fist, and whilst he was hiding it he would call a prisoner to him and say: “Guess what I’m holding in my hand you twisted-up alcoholic. Guess right and I’ll put you on the trusties team. Guess wrong and I’ll chop your fucking yid snout off with my sabre.”
‘This went along without any trouble for a couple of years, until a Gestapo controller disguised as an Obergefreiter infiltrated Germersheim to check on things. The Führer wanted to know what was going on. It was a Monday morning, just like it is today. And it was snowing too. Leutnant Liebe hadn’t been warned about the visit and, as if to spite his lovely name, went screaming and shouting about as usual. Before he knew what was happening he was leading a section of 75 mm horse-drawn arti
llery straight towards the front. He would no doubt have made a success of the job of forward artillery spotter which he was given. If he hadn’t been killed, almost as soon as he took it up.’
‘Herr Stabsfeldwebel,’ Porta looks stern, ‘Would you like to die for your Führer, Family and Fatherland?’
Stabsfeldwebel Brumme swallows a lump in his throat and tries hard to look patriotic. He can’t feel sure whether these two are a couple of Ironheads from the SS or a pair of queer ducks flapping away desperately to try and save themselves. He finds it best to be extremely careful. If they are Ironheads then he’s in the shit. He points to the opposite wall which is ornamented with a large photograph of Adolf Hitler.
‘There hangs our Führer,’ he says proudly.
‘He hangs nicely!’ grins Porta impertinently, sniffing hard at the air.
‘I don’t smell the odour of Valhalla or of heroic deeds here in your unit. I think we’re in agreement. Enjoy life while you can and keep as far away as possible from all that noisy warfare.’
The Stabsfeldwebel stares thoughtfully for a moment at Porta’s cunning rat face.
‘Do you doubt the Final Victory?’ asks Porta pointing accusingly at him.
‘Of course not!’ trumpets Brumme in confusion. A crazy question, he thinks. Only an idiot on his deathbed would answer in the negative.
‘Did you listen to the Führer’s last speech?’ asks Porta with an inquisitorial air.
‘Yes, sir,’ lies Brumme. ‘He spoke well.’ He wonders desperately what kind of craziness Adolf had ranted last time.
‘Are there Jews in your family?’ continues Porta with a dangerous Gestapo look in his eyes. A threatening frown from Tiny accompanies the question.
‘My Aryan certificate is in order,’ replies Brumme, now noticeably nervous. Fearfully he remembers that it only goes back to his grandmother. He is from the Reichswehr where an Aryan Grandmother is enough. Those Goddam Jews!