He is interrupted. The door crashes open and in comes Porta, dragging a squealing pig after him.
‘He came back, after all,’ he grins, happily.
‘A few hours of that Commie lot was enough for him. Pretty, ain’t he? That squealing’s just an expression of how happy he is at having managed to defect!’
‘You’re to report to the OC,’ says the Old Man, tiredly. ‘That means now!’
‘Who says you’ve laid eyes on me?’ asks Porta, casually. ‘Löwe’s only a sodding officer. That lot can wait till I’ve got time for ’em, and time’s what I haven’t got enough of just now!’
‘You’re to report to company,’ sighs the Old Man, ‘whether you’ve got time or not! Call company,’ he orders Gregor, who has communications duty.
‘Connection broken, ‘Porta shakes with laughter, as he wrenches the telephone cable loose. ‘Come on Tiny, we got to get food on!’
We eat and eat – for four hours together. Grease runs down from our mouths on to our chests. In between we take a trip outside to make room for more. We are so ravenously hungry that we are unable to stop eating.
Gregor almost chokes himself. Porta recommends that we hang him up by his heels. He coughs up a large chunk of pork.
We do not stop eating until only the gnawed bones remain. Gasping and belching, we sprawl on the floor, totally gorged with food.
War is a disease.
Soen Hassel
The train was struck by a bomb only a few yards away from the shelter of the tunnel. The railwaymen and the tom-off boiler of the locomotive were thrown 400 yards away into the ripe corn.
The leading carriage stood up vertically in the air. The next in line had been squeezed into the semblance of a closed concertina.
The Jabos came back. The leading machine dropped phosphorus bombs. Incendiary sticks skipped across the Red Cross cars. In seconds they had become a roaring sea of flame. Most of the patients burned to death in their beds.
The Jabos turned and swept the cornfield with their machine-guns. Before leaving they dropped the last of their incendiaries. The corn blazed up.
The black smoke of the conflagration was visible all day, even from many miles away. Mot a single man or woman on the hospital train escaped alive.
*Ssvaeoda: Russian for freedom.
*Very freely:
We’re from many a distant homeland.
But we feel no loss in our hearts.
For we have not lost our homeland
It is here before Madrid . . .
* The Blood Order: An early SA decoration
* Panjemajo, grabit. Russian: Understand arsehole?
* Stovepipe: Bazooka
VERA KONSTANTINOVNA
‘I don’t like this joint,’ grumbles Porta, pulling the cork from a bottle of vodka with his teeth. He takes a long swig of the fiery spirit and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Is this a billet to give us? Not even a rotten stove! It’s cold as an Eskimo’s arsehole! An’ they call us the herrenvolk! Don’t make me die laughing!’
‘Section leaders to OC,’ sings out the clerk, Gefreiter Voss, sticking his pointy nose in to us through a broken window.
‘The devil,’ growls the Old Man, sourly, buttoning up his long winter cloak, and slinging his machine-pistol over his shoulder, muzzle down. ‘Look after the shop while I’m gone,’ he turns to Barcelona, ‘and I want that SMG in position. Those wicked sods could be on us again before we knew it!’
His breath clouds out around him, as he wheels away on his clumsy bow-legs through the deep sludge. His hands, contrary to all regulations, are pushed down deeply into his pockets. Anyone seeing him rolling along with his cap pulled down on his head, round-shouldered, bow-legged and wearing clumsy infantry boots, would think him no more than a stupid yokel. But they would be terribly wrong. In reality he is a deadly dangerous, battle-trained soldier, with a quite superhuman faculty of calmness, despite his frayed nerves. His face resembles a squashed orange, but still, somehow, engenders confidence. He is an old trenchrat, who doesn’t trust many people; and that is one of the most important reasons for his having got us out of the dirtiest corners imaginable. And with amazingly few losses.
A little grey cat follows him, meowing, part of the way.
He kicks the door of the company office open disrespectfully. Here Hauptfeldwebel Hoffmann reigns, fat and vain as a South American dictator. He is wearing a tankman’s black uniform, despite the fact that it is reserved for line troops and is not for echelon.
‘You’re supposed to knock three times before you come in here,’ says Hoffmann angrily, swinging half-round and then back again in his American swivel chair. ‘This isn’t a brothel, man, it’s Company HQ. This is where the brains live!’
‘Brains?’ grins the Old Man, in an insulting tone. ‘You’re sitting on ’em! Don’t get too blown up, will you! Just remember we’re short of men up the line. I might just ask for you down there with me, so you’d get busted to an ordinary Feldwebel an’ lose your two silver stripes!’
‘You get me out in your lousy section?’ jeers Hoffmann. ‘No Beier, I’m this company’s Hauptfeldwebel, and I’m gonna stay being that as long as there is a 5 Company. They need an empty-headed key-swinger to look after the prisoners at Germersheim. Fancy the job?’
‘Shit!’ growls the Old Man, tramping on in to Oberleutnant Löwe without knocking.
‘Grüss Gott,’ Löwe greets him, leaning back in his rickety, creaking chair. ‘Like a “little black” to warm you up?’
‘Yes, please,’ answers the Old Man, filling a mug half-full with coffee and topping it off with vodka. He throws his helmet down on the trampled earth of the floor, sits down on a hand-grenade box, and stretches out his legs and his filthy boots in front of him. He leans his machine-pistol up against a table leg.
‘You look tired, Beier,’ says Löwe. ‘Been rough the last couple of months, hasn’t it?’
‘We’ve had our hands full,’ says the Old Man, blowing on his coffee. ‘That bloody 2 Section’ll soon have me climbin’ up the wall. No sooner we’ve got away from the blasted war than I’m standin’ there with me mpi at the ready keepin’ the rotten lot away from the temptations of the soddin’ flesh. Sometimes I can’t hardly understand what’s going on. About a week ago Unteroffizier Julius Heide goes raving, an’ mows down a couple of hundred civvies with his machine-gun. Even if I was to charge him for it nothing’d happen, except me gettin’ a bawling-out from the NSFO. That spit an’ polish follower o’ the book, Unteroffizier Julius Heide’s a valued member of the party, so why shouldn’t he get his funnies murdering a few women and children! They’re only untermensch, anyway. Soon as we’re finished with the murdering an’ killing, Porta and Tiny enjoys themselves with a couple of willing Russian girls. What happens? They get punished for fraternizing! The laws in this war are really strange!’
‘I didn’t hear what you just said, Beier,’ smiles Oberleutnant Löwe. ‘Neither of us wants a court-martial, do we?’
The four other section commanders enter, and bark out short reports.
‘More than half the company’s gone up in smoke, ‘Löwe says, looking at the casualty lists in front of him. ‘So! Until further notice we remain inactive. There’s fresh supplies and replacements on the way to us. But don’t take that inactive business too seriously. There’s strict orders from regiment to keep the men constantly on the move. Otherwise they’ll get up to all sorts of monkey-tricks. Herr Oberst Hinka wants no complaints, either civil or military.’ Löwe throws a glance at the Old Man, who is still sitting on the grenade box. warming his hands on his coffee. ‘And I’m thinking of 2 Section in particular. Feldwebel Beier, and also in particular of those two madmen Obergefreiter Josef Porta and Obergefreiter Wolfgang Creutzfeldt. And. while we are on the subject of 2 Section, we’ve received a long message from Army HQ.’ Löwe throws three closely-written folio sheets over to the Old Man.
‘That’s to do with Gefreiter Albert. They want us to wash him
white!’
The four other section leaders double up with laughter. Only the Old Man and Löwe remain serious and straight-faced.
‘There’s nothing to laugh at, ‘Löwe tells them, buttoning his greatcoat. ‘This is a very annoying business. Answer it Beier, in a manner which can bring them to understand that a negro cannot be washed white. Before I forget it, there’s another annoying matter between the NSFO and Joseph Porta. I thought I’d be able to stop it, but, unfortunately, it’s already gone to regiment. Division’s heard about it too. If the worst happens it could cost Porta his head. A bitch of a case. You must keep your people in order, Beier. I’m punishing your section by giving them burial duty. Don’t forget, now, Germans and Russians are not to be buried in the same grave, and civilians are to be buried on their own. Don’t make the same mess of it as you did last time, when they mixed officers and other ranks together. Officers get their own individual graves, and such graves are specially decorated. The men go into a common grave, and may be buried in three layers, as long as there is a 30 cm layer of earth between them.’
‘Lord help us!’ mumbles the Old Man. grinding his teeth. He fills up his mug again with hot coffee.
Almost an hour later, his pipe billowing smoke, he tramps back down the muddy, tracked-up road.
The cat meets him again, and stand up on its back legs, pawing at his trousers.
‘All right for you,’ he says, scratching his neck. ‘You haven’t got 2 Section! You’ve only got yourself. Shit, that’s what it is. pussy!’ He becomes more and more angry with the section, the closer he gets to the billet. ‘I’ll bury ’em!’ he promises himself. ‘God damn it, if I don’t. I’ll make ’em crawl round the world three times, an’ it’ll be over the North Pole an’ the South Pole. That ought to cool ’em down a bit!’
Fuming inside, he kicks open the door, throws his machine-pistol down in a corner, and looks angrily around. He sees immediately the almost unbelievable disorder in the great hall.
Untermensch Albert is having a furious verbal battle with Herrenvolk Heide. ‘You’re always after me, Julius, but now I want to know the reason why,’ snorts Albert. ‘Even if I am black I’m just as much a German as you are, and I’ve got all the rights of a German. So if you’re after me for bein’ a Reich-nigger then I’m gonna report you for it!’
‘If you’re a German, then I’m a Chinaman,’ rages Julius, contemptuously. ‘I’ll tell you what you are, you black ape! You’re a charcoal cartoon of a human being, a trained, performing man-eater, who chews bones for dinner like a hound-dog!’
‘’E’s more’n that!’ trumpets Tiny. ‘’Is gran’dad was a French Yid from Senegal, with a bleedin’ great ‘ook of a snitch, an’ the skin of’is cock cut off. ‘E used to clean up in the synagogue every Thursday!’
‘It’s a lie,’ howls Albert, insultedly. ‘It was my great-grandpappy was a French Jew, and he married a girl from Senegal!’
‘Now I’ve heard everything,’ gasps Heide. He is on his feet and over by Albert in three long strides. He stands over him with legs straddled and fists planted on his hips, stinking of Unteroffizier.
‘Are you a Yid? Answer, you black mongrel, or I’ll crack your skull wide open, as I have the right to do!’
Albert creeps further down into his ginger furs, in terror.
‘My great-grandpappy was a French Jew. I’m a German,’ he whines, fumbling for his machine-pistol. Before he can get hold of it Heide kicks it clattering out of his reach.
‘French Jew!’ sneers Heide. ‘There are no French Jews. Either you’re a Jew or you’re not a Jew. You’ve sneaked your way into the German Wehrmacht under false premises. God knows what the Racial Commission’ll say when I report this.’
‘They’ll kick you out,’ grins Albert, assuredly. ‘an’ they’ll tell you, man, to go wipe your Naziarse on your report! I’ve been in front of ’em, an’ they’ve looked down my throat an’ up my arsehole, an’ measured my face, an’ held me by the bollocks an’ pulled my prick for me. And they declared me 80% German when they’d finished. I was close to gettin’ put in the SS, where I might’ve ended up an officer!’
‘What is all this piss you’re talkin’,’ shouts the Old Man, irritably, pushing Heide angrily to one side. ‘I don’t want any trouble with you lot, whether you’re Jews or whether you’re Germans. You keep yourself to yourself and go polish your machine-pistol, Julius! You’re nothing but trouble to me. And you, Albert, go out and wash your face and make sure you rinse it several times! That’s an order from Corps HQ, and you come back in here to me after and prove your black colour’s real! You, Barcelona, you’re guard commander for the next three days!’
‘Why?’ asks Barcelona, his mouth dropping open. ‘What’ve I done?’
‘Saluted the General when you shouldn’t have, you sloppy fool! Do it again and they’ll put you inside! Porta! Where the hell’s that madman got to?’
‘Cookin’ food.’ answers Tiny. ‘Pork chops à l’Alba!’
‘I don’t care where his blasted pork chops’re from,’ rages the Old Man, flinging his steel helmet down on the floor. ‘He’s halfway inside Germersheim, an’ they’ll hang him there! Nobody goes anywhere, you hear! Everybody stays here! In an hour from now you parade for grave duty, and in the meantime you clean this place up. Nails in the walls for uniforms an’ equipment an’ regimentally hung up. Beds made up out from the wall at equal distances. Helmets on gasmask pouches accordin’ to regulations. No missing nails in your boots!’
‘We ain’t got any nails.’ protests Gregor, weakly.
‘Shit some, then,’ orders the Old Man.
Tiny jumps up, clicks his heels together, and lifts his pale grey bowler courteously.
‘We ’ear an’ obey, ’Err Feldwebel, sir!’ he trumpets.
‘Cut that play-acting out!’ snarls the Old Man. viciously. ‘There’ll be early parade tomorrow mornin’! All illegal weapons to be handed in! Anybody running round with enemy guns’ll be for it!’
‘For it!’ echoes Tiny.
For a second it looks as if the Old Man is going to throw himself at him. Then he gives up. The energy of his anger seeps out of him. He drops down on to a creaking bed, runs his hands through his hair, and begins to fill his pipe.
‘What a shower of shit you lot are,’ he mumbles, looking round at us.
We dig the common grave in the park. There is no more room in the churchyard.
The Old Man sits on the remains of a pedestal, on which a statue once stood, and blows out great clouds of tobacco-smoke.
Porta and Tiny are sorting bodies, and talking quietly to one another.
‘You as much as look at a gold tooth, and I’ll shoot you!’ The Old Man aims at them threateningly with the stem of his pipe.
‘Perish the thought,’ lies Porta, with one finger inside the mouth of a corpse. Tiny stands ready with the forceps.
‘Two in this one,’ whispers Porta. ‘Wait till he’s down in the grave before you take his savings. Then the Old Man can’t see it. How many we got?’
‘A lot,’ answers Tiny. More than five is a lot where he is concerned.
The partly decayed body of a woman slips from my hands as I pass it on to Heide and Gregor. They are down in the grave lining up the bodies regimentally.
Heide goes amuck when the heavy corpse knocks him over into the middle of the grave. Snorting with rage he throws a torn-off arm at me.
‘You did that deliberately! God help you when I get hold of you!’
I hide behind a toolshed, and stay there until he goes off the boil. He is mad enough to carry out his threat.
We have to dig two more common graves. There are many more dead than we had thought.
During the sorting process Tiny comes to an SS-Haupt-sturmführer who has had the lower part of his body shot away. Since orders are that parts of bodies are to be buried together with the person to whom they belong, Tiny begins to search for a pair of legs which could fit the Hauptsturm-führer’s body. Not f
inding them, he takes two torn-off legs which, by the boots, must have belonged to a Russian officer.
Porta scratches his stiff red hair doubtfully, and looks critically at the legs, with their Russian riding breeches and high brown boots.
‘Don’t really fit, do they?’ he says, spitting over the edge of the officer’s grave. ‘If they ever open this one up, they will be confused. They’ll think it’s a wrong ’un they’ve run across. An SS officer who was going to desert and had started changing into Ivan’s uniform. No it won’t do, my son. We’ll have to get him a couple of German legs!’
‘I’ll ’ave another look, then,’ grunts Tiny patiently, crawling, with difficulty, up out of the grave. He stops in a kneeling position on its edge, and turns an ear toward the low-hanging clouds. ‘Jabos!’ he shouts. ‘Bleedin’ arse’oles, Jabos!’
Porta stretches his neck. His cunning, foxy face snifTs towards the east.
‘There!’ yells Tiny. He is back in the grave like lightning, and burrows down between the bodies.
They seem to jump up from behind the trees, and, with a nerve-shattering roar, they pass over our heads. Their stubby wings sparkle as they rise vertically into the sky and come back round for a return run. They open fire with all their automatic weapons: machine-guns and light cannon. Hundreds of spurts of dust fountain up from the ground, as the projectiles whip across the park. Two of the machines bank, and fly along the row of open graves. They are so low that the faces of their pilots can be clearly seen.
I drop down flat on my face behind the toolshed. A machine-cannon salvo splinters into it, throwing all kinds of dirt and muck over me. I turn my face up for a moment to see where the battle-planes have gone to.
Both machines seem to rear up on their tails in the air. They describe a great arc and come roaring back at us. This time they drop bombs. The shattering noise of the explosions almost burst our eardrums. The earth shakes. Clods of earth and stones rain down on me.