‘Sheep piss,’ said Barcelona. ‘Old country remedy. Works wonders. Find yourself a castrated ram and get it to piss all over you . . . Cure it in no time.’
He strolled nonchalantly away, with a happy smile playing on his lips, and Abt struggled wildly to his feet.
‘Bastard!’ he yelled. ‘Bloody bastards, the whole goddamned lot of you!’
‘All right, all right,’ growled Tiny, pushing him down again. ‘Keep it for the Russians. Don’t waste it on us.’
Away to my left, Gregor was in the middle of telling Lenzing some long and garbled story of how he had once moved a grand piano from the fifth floor of a house down a spiral staircase without getting so much as a scratch on it. Somehow a brothel and a naked Swedish whore with breasts like pumpkins came into the story as well, but for the life of me I couldn’t make out quite how, and neither, from the look on his face, could Lenzing. In fact, I’m not at all sure that Lenzing was even listening. He was staring through the trees in the direction of the approaching enemy, and perhaps he was wondering how many of his blood brothers he would be able to kill before they killed him.
Heide, stern and silent, had brought out one of his cleaning rags and was obsessively polishing his machine-gun. It already shone like a beacon and probably advertised our presence to every Russian soldier in Poland, but Heide never could leave well enough alone.
The Legionnaire was watching the approach of the men and dogs, and indicating their distance to the machine-gunners. They were advancing with bayonets fixed, the dogs still tugging on their chains, heads down and noses to the ground. At the head marched an officer, his nagajka in his hand.
‘Five hundred yards,’ said the Legionnaire.
The Old Man shouldered his rifle and slipped back the safety catch.
‘Range two hundred.’
Barcelona turned towards me.
‘You ready?’
I nodded, and indicated the pile of grenades which were laid out before me.
‘OK. After the second salvo.’
‘Three hundred yards,’ said the Legionnaire.
Private Abt gave a low moan, and was clouted over the head by Tiny. Porta reluctantly jettisoned his empty corned beef tin, and then picked up his rifle. The dogs were really going mad by this time, and the handlers bent down to set them loose.
‘Two hundred and fifty,’ droned the Legionnaire. ‘Two twenty-five . . . two hundred—’
‘Fire!’
The four MGs crashed in unison. The officer with the nagajka was riddled from head to foot with bullets. Tiny laughed, exultantly.
‘It’s like a game of darts!’ he said.
‘With a human dartboard,’ muttered Lenzing.
The Russians hesitated. Some of them tried to turn back, but they were caught between two fires and they had no choice but to go on. Before them lay the German guns and behind them the Russian. One of their own officers had opened up with an automatic rifle and was firing warning shots over their heads. The dogs needed no such encouragement. They came bounding towards us, snarling and showing all their teeth, and Private Abt gave a terrified scream and turned to run. Fortunately for himself, he tripped over a tree trunk and was kicked back into line by the Legionnaire while Tiny was occupied with his machine-gun, otherwise it would have been a bullet in the back and farewell Private Abt.
A second salvo was fired, and all but one of the dogs fell. The one remaining was a great black brute which hurled itself in a frenzy upon the Old Man, teeth bared and mouth flecked with saliva. The Old Man calmly took aim and shot it as it came towards him. He never was one to panic. I don’t think I ever saw him lose his head in any situation. The dog sprang sideways, howling in agony, and the Legionnaire dispassionately took out his revolver and put a bullet through its brain.
There was scarcely any need for my grenades. The battle was over almost before it had begun, and the Old Man gave the signal for us to pull out.
‘If war were always as much fun as that,’ declared Tiny, very happy with himself, ‘it wouldn’t be half bad.’
‘Strange sort of fun,’ muttered Lenzing, gloomily. ‘What happens when it’s all over, that’s what I’d like to know?’
‘When what’s all over?’
‘The war – the fun – the fighting—’
‘Well, when it’s all over, it’s all over, ain’t it?’
‘As simple as that?’ said Lenzing.
‘I rather fancy not,’ murmured the Legionnaire. ‘Ten to one, when they’ve got rid of Adolf, they’ll start off all over again trying to get rid of each other.’
‘And then where shall we be?’ demanded Lenzing.
The Legionnaire smiled.
‘Well, we know where you’ll be, don’t we? Out on the barricades waving your little red flag and crying death to the Yankee capitalists!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lenzing. He sighed. ‘I don’t know . . . I sometimes think I’ve seen enough to last me the rest of my life.’
Shortly before sunset, we recovered the Colonel and the rest of the Company. The Colonel was so relieved to see us that he almost burst into tears of joy. I wondered what would have happened if we hadn’t come back. I wondered who would have taken charge, and whether they would have given themselves up to the enemy.
‘Sergeant, I’ve been thinking,’ said the Colonel. He clapped a hand on the Old Man’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘and I’m damned if I can see how we’re going to get down to that river.’
There was a pause. The Old Man waited respectfully to hear what the result of all this thinking might be, but it appeared, in the end, that there wasn’t one.
‘I see,’ said the Old Man.
‘Well, there you have it,’ said the Colonel. ‘There you have it, in a nutshell. That is my opinion.’
‘So – ah – what do you suggest we should do, sir?’
‘Ah, well, now – as to that—’ The Colonel tipped back his helmet and mopped at his furrowed brow with a ragged handkerchief. ‘That, of course, is a matter of some concern, is it not?’
‘It is indeed, sir,’ agreed the Old Man, gravely.
There was another pause. The Colonel looked grey and ancient. He looked like a half-buried corpse. I felt almost sorry for him.
‘You know what?’ said Barcelona, suddenly. ‘I just had an idea.’
We turned, hopefully, to look at him. Barcelona didn’t very often have ideas, but when he did they were sometimes worth listening to.
‘Well, look,’ he said, ‘Here are we – and here’s the river – and here’re the Russians. Right?’
‘Right,’ said the Colonel, with a fine grasp of the situation. ‘We are surrounded.’
‘So what do we do?’ said Barcelona. ‘We attack a Russian section – we obliterate them – we take their uniforms. We make our way down to the river. We see if the bridge is still standing. If it is, we go across. No one stops us. They think we’re Russians. If it isn’t—’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Porta here can speak the lingo. He can ask around, find out if there’s any other way across, find out what’s happening. And if all else fails, we can build our own bridge. Orders from up top. Simple. Who’s going to argue with us?’
‘Hey!’ shouted Tiny. ‘That’s not such a bad idea!’ He turned excitedly to the rest of us. ‘Imagine that,’ he said. ‘Put on Russian uniforms and we could march all the way to Berlin in ’em!’
‘Except that if I’m going to be the one to do the talking,’ said Porta, who always was the one to do the talking in any situation in which he found himself, ‘then I insist on being a colonel.’
‘Be what you like,’ said Barcelona, ‘just so long as you get us across that river.’
The Colonel by this time was looking pretty worried. As well he might: Porta and Barcelona were quite capable of attempting to put the plan into practice. The Colonel cleared his throat.
‘We’d better be pushing on,’ he said, nervously. Doubtless he had visions of being arreste
d in Russian uniform and shot as a spy, though it could scarcely have been any worse than being arrested in German uniform and shot as an enemy combatant. ‘You know, Sergeant,’ he said, in a low confidential voice to the Old Man, ‘some of these chaps of yours are enough to make one’s blood run cold . . .’
We plunged back into the forest, deeper into the towering trees and the matted undergrowth. The rain had stopped and steam was rising from the marshy ground. The mosquitoes were everywhere, they followed us in a great buzzing cloud and were enough to drive a man mad. Tiny suddenly paused in the act of swiping them away from his face and held up a warning hand.
‘Russians,’ he said.
We froze. None of us could make out anything other than the normal forest sounds, but he was a vainglorious fool who argued with Tiny on such matters.
‘Let’s make a dash for it,’ hissed Kuls, who was now wearing two Red Cross armbands on both sleeves, just to make quite sure that no one could mistake his occupation.
‘Don’t be a damn fool!’
The Old Man held him back. We stood listening, and Tiny silently pointed a finger. We inclined our heads in the direction he indicated, and slowly I began to make out a series of sounds which had nothing to do with the rustling of leaves. They were the sounds of rifles clicking, the sounds of men’s voices, the sounds of heavy boots in the undergrowth . . .
‘In there!’
The Old Man made a dash for the side of the path, where vast mounds of leaves had piled up. He tore away the top layer with his hands, then used his bayonet to dig his way through the soft, moist earth beneath. He was very soon buried up to the neck, and the rest of us were burrowing after him like oversized moles.
‘Are you sure this is altogether wise?’ panted the Colonel.
Wise or not, it was too late now to do anything else. We curled up nose to tail in our peaty nests, with the leaves thick above us and the earth closing in all round. The Russians were very close. I heard the safety catch click on a rifle. I could feel the heavy footsteps as they passed by. I could hear the voices as they talked.
‘Njet germanski! Job rwojamadj Piotr.’
Under the earth, I felt that I was suffocating. I had left myself a small passage for air, but now I became obsessed with the idea that the hole had closed up, that I was slowly poisoning myself with my own exhalations. The sweat began to pour down my back and my chest. I was bent double like an embryo in the womb, my knees tucked up to my chin, my arms wrapped round my legs. Panic swamped over me, my lungs were bursting, I could bear it no longer, I had to get out . . . I sank my teeth hard into the butt of my revolver, pressed as it was against my mouth. Bright lights darted-like multi-coloured fish before my eyes. I could feel something crawling over my face and up my nose and any moment now I was going to sneeze . . .
Overhead, the Russians were crashing about in the undergrowth and shouting and laughing at one another.
‘Job twojemadj!’
They were striding along the path, prying and poking our bed of leaves. I was suffering from hideous cramp in both arms, but there was no room to move even so much as a finger. Somewhere outside, a shot was fired. I thought for a minute we had been discovered, and my mind was filled with waves of terror as I imagined the tortures they would inflict upon us if they caught us like this, buried beneath the earth and unable to defend ourselves. A living death. Would it not be wiser to break free and run for it, now, while one still had the chance? Better to die in the sweet, fresh air than to slowly suffocate in an underground coffin.
‘Ruski veks Stoi!’
How many more of them? How long before they gave up the search and left us in peace? My bladder was bursting, it was sending hot, shooting pains up through my body. Slowly and guiltily I let the burning urine dribble down between my legs, and the relief it gave me was so intense that it momentarily blotted out all my other problems.
Up above us, but moving further away, there were more cries, more shots. They must be firing on anything that moved; crows, mice, even mosquitoes.
I took a deep breath of stale air and felt my pulse beating in desperate protest. I knew, now, how an apple must feel when it was put into a hay box. I remembered at school putting apples into hay boxes. If you left them there long enough, they started to cook, and that was what I was doing. Surely anyone outside must be able to see the steam rising . . .
‘Hey, that’s funny,’ said Porta. ‘Where’s Sven?’
‘I’m down here,’ I said.
‘I’m down here!’
I struggled desperately to move my head and clear a passage through the leaves, but I seemed to be paralysed from the neck down. I tried shouting for help, but my voice was drowned and they didn’t hear it.
‘He must be somewhere about,’ said Tiny, and he brought one of his hefty great boots crashing down on top of my head.
They hauled me out and shook me, punched me in the chest and slapped me in the face. Kuls ran about with his Red Cross armbands telling the others what to do several seconds after they’d already done it. Very soon I began to feel almost normal and even became aware of the warm damp patch in my trousers.
‘I thought you was a goner,’ Tiny amiably informed me.
We marched on our way, through the never-ending forest. We had long since exhausted all our rations, and our bellies were beginning to scream aloud with hunger pains. Porta, in particular, found the deprivation hard to bear. He began making up menus in his head and reciting them out loud to the rest of us. At last the Old Man could bear it no longer and curtly told him to shut up, whereupon Porta retired in a magnificent sulk and didn’t say a word to a soul for almost ten minutes.
At nightfall a halt was called. We settled down under the trees and through sheer exhaustion fell asleep at once. Private Abt was to take the first watch. He was almost sick with fear. Every shadow, every blade of grass made him jump. His thigh was throbbing, and he was convinced by now that his wound was gangrenous. Cautiously, from one of his pockets, he pulled out a small square of paper which he had been keeping secret for many days. It was a piece of blatant enemy propaganda, dropped by an aeroplane to be picked up by a gullible fool such as Private Abt. He turned his back on his sleeping comrades and by the light of the stars read the paper yet again.
‘SAFE CONDUCT,’ it said. ‘This permit guarantees safe passage to any member of the German forces who wishes to transfer his allegiance to the Russian Army. (Signed) M. S. Malinin, Divisional General. K. K. Rokossovski, C-in-C, Russian Forces in Poland.’
Abt folded the paper and replaced it carefully in his pocket. He opened his ammunition pouch and took out a morsel of dry bread, upon which he thoughtfully chewed for several minutes. At last he made up his mind. He sidled away into the trees, and there he took to his heels and began to run as if all the devils in hell were after him. His gangrenous leg was forgotten. He tossed his revolver and half a dozen hand grenades into the bushes. He tore off his belt and his ammunition pouches, and discarded his helmet and his rifle. Head down, he pelted through the wood towards the village occupied by Russian troops.
‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’ve come to join you! I have a safe conduct from your generals!’
Two Siberians stood watching as he staggered up to them through the long, tough grasses of the marshland. He was waving a filthy grey handkerchief over his head as a sign of good intent, and anyone could see that he was unarmed. It must have been obvious, even without all his screaming and shouting, that he was a German deserter.
The Siberians raised their sub-machine-guns and prepared to fire.
‘Don’t shoot!’ screamed Private Abt. ‘I’m not a Nazi!’
He stood before them, waving his flag of truce in one hand and his safe conduct in the other. Coldly and deliberately, the Siberians blasted him out of existence. He still screamed for mercy as he fell.
The wind caught the handkerchief and tossed it high up into the trees. The safe conduct scuttered along the ground and was lost in the undergrowth.
/>
It was Barcelona who discovered that our would-be deserter had finally left us.
‘Why the pissing hell didn’t we shoot the bastard while we still had a chance?’ grumbled Porta.
It was small solace that by now, if he had succeeded in reaching the enemy, he would almost certainly be dead. The alarm had been raised, the Russians would be out looking for us, and we could ill afford to take any chances.
We pushed on as fast as we could during the rest of the night and the following morning, hacking our way through the dense undergrowth, tearing ourselves to ribbons on thorns and twigs, sliding down muddy slopes, wading waste deep through evil-smelling bogs. Towards mid-day, we came to a clearing with a broad, winding path running across it. The path was full of soldiers on the march. They were Russian soldiers, going west.
Silently, we withdrew into the shelter of the trees. If we didn’t cross that particular path, it would mean a detour of several miles and the strong possibility of losing our way in the vastness of the forest. There was nothing to do but stay hidden in the bushes, to wait until darkness and hope that by then the troop movements would have ceased.
Dusk came, and there was no let up. The traffic was as heavy as ever. We waited another hour. By now it was dark, and it looked as if the entire Russian Army was on the march and likely to be so throughout the night.
‘Fuck hanging about like this,’ muttered Porta. ‘We’ll be here till bleeding Doomsday at this rate. My belly ain’t going to stand the strain much longer.’
‘So what exactly,’ said the Old Man, in frigid tones, ‘do you intend to do about it?’
Porta stared out thoughtfully at the road. He gazed up at the night sky, which was starless and cloud-covered. He looked back again at the road, and before anyone could stop him he was up and off, shooting across from one side to the other almost under the wheels of a truck. We waited for the panic and the shooting to begin, but the convoy continued peaceably on its way.
‘How about it?’ said the Legionnaire. ‘Is it worth a try?’
The Old Man hunched a shoulder.