The Commissar
Someone gives out a long, rattling scream. It drowns in the roar of the Jabos, as they attack again. The projectiles spitting from their wings seem to roll up the asphalt path like a carpet.
The machines flash over us again. More bombs fall; deafening us.
They come in twice more. Then they fly off towards the east, back to their base.
We wish everything far, far away, as we start in again collecting bodies.
Tiny finds a pair of German legs which will do for the Hauptsturmführer.
It is far into the night before we have finished filling in the graves. We sit down, tiredly, on the soft earth of one of the common graves. The vodka bottle goes from hand to hand. We are soaked in sweat despite the biting cold of the evening.
The Old Man is sitting with Barcelona, sorting dog-tags. German here, Russian there. They put them separately into large bags, and tie the service books of the dead men in bundles. There are also letters. A lot of letters. Barcelona unfolds one and reads it aloud:
My beloved boy,
It is a long time since I heard from you. Did you get my parcel? There is a woolly sweater in it to keep you warm. Don’t forget to change your socks if you get your feet wet. You know how you are with colds. Claus the foreman’s son who you went to school with is back from the Army. He lost one arm but they are not sending him home. When his leave’s finished they are putting him on barrack duty. Even the ones who lose a leg aren’t getting sent home now. We had an air-raid alarm again yesterday. They dropped some bombs on the railway station and they say it’s flattened. I’m going down there this afternoon with Mrs Schröder to see how bad it is. Now look after yourself won’t you. Now your dad’s gone I’ve only got you. I’m glad you’re on a part of the front where there’s not a lot happening. Mrs Schultzes two boys are in a place where a lot of terrible things are going on but we mustn’t talk about that. Our new Gauleiter is very strict and hard on people who talk too much. They came and took our neighbour Mrs Schmidt in the middle of the night because she talked about something called Nachiund Nebellager. So you have to be careful what you say. My dear, darling boy, it’s twelve months since you went away but thank God you’ll be getting leave in two months time. I am counting the hours. Write soon. I get so disappointed when the postman goes by and there’s no letter for me. I know you’re not allowed more than one letter every eight days, but promise me you’ll write then at the least.
See you in 58 days time.
Your loving
Mother
‘Shit!’ says Tiny, as Barcelona refolds the letter and places it inside the soldier’s service record book.
‘Up you get,’ commands the Old Man. coming to his feet. ‘Sling arms! Broken step! Follow me! Quick march!’
Chatting as we go, we walk in a disorderly column down a narrow path. We keep to its sides, under the shelter of the trees, in cover from the air.
‘Shall I cook the grub when we get home,’ offers Porta, from the darkness under the trees. By ‘home’ he means the factory hall we have taken over for our quarters. ‘I’m going to do us “Pork Chops à l’Alba”,’ he goes on, enthusiastically. ‘It’s a dish that Kings an’ Emperors prize highly. Orthodox Jews do it with beef cutlets, but that spoils the effect. It needs character to do “Pork Chops à l’Alba”, I can tell you. First of all it’s out in the fields and find your shallot onions. These you have to chop very fine, and the right song for doing that to is the “Georgian Harvest song”. When they’re nicely chopped up, you sprinkle ’em, with an elegant flip of the wrist, with parsley, sage, salt an’ pepper. But, for heaven’s sake, black peppers! The man who uses white pepper should have the devil let down through his throat with a roll of barbed wire on his back! Then you make small cuts on each side of your pork chops with a good sharp knife. I usually use my combat knife. It’s always got a good, sharp edge to it. I prefer to hum “The Song of the Volga Boatmen” during the next operation, which is rubbing the onion mix into the pork. Now we come to the next step, which can be difficult. Borrow some butter from your next-door neighbour, which, of course, you never intend to pay back. A lot of people live high on borrowing from their next-door neighbours. It’s cheaper an’ also saves storage space. The butter you’ve borrowed you then melt. Take your pork chop between two fingers, I recommend the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, and dip half of it in the melted butter. Turn it, then, on a fire-proof dish for about ten minutes. After this, you pour your wine over it, but light an’easy. Don’t drown it! The chops only need to be slightly, but happily, intoxicated. Whip in the remainder of the borrowed butter and pour the sauce over the meat.’
‘What kind of wine?’ comes Gregor’s voice from the back of the section.
‘White, of course, you excuse for a driver!’ snaps Porta.
‘Any special sort?’ Gregor enquires.
‘How that fool goes on! You can see he’s been around generals too long! Use what you’ve got. The main thing is it’s white, and what’s left of it you drink yourself.’
A despatch-rider comes round the bend ahead of us at top speed and stops in front of the Old Man, who is out in the middle of the narrow path with his arm raised.
‘Russian tanks, Herr Feldwebel!’ shouts the despatch-rider, straddling his motorcycle. ‘Coming this way to get back to their own lines. Orders from Regimental HQ. Stop and destroy!’ With a roar the motorcycle is off again.
‘God damn and set fire to it,’ rages the Old Man. ‘Tanks, and we’ve got the job of wiping ’em out! Of course! Who else?’
Tiny takes a sausage from his pocket, snaps it in two and gives Porta half.
‘There’s some blood on it,’ he apologizes,’ but they say as blood gives a feller strength!’
‘Where’d you get it? asks Porta, suspiciously.
‘From a dead un’,’ answers Tiny, chewing on his half of the sausage.
‘What kind of a dead un?’ asks Porta, sniffing at his half.
‘Russian bleedin’ lieutenant,’ mumbles Tiny, looking towards the trees.
‘The sausage ought to be all right then. Officers only eat top-class stuff,’ says Porta, taking a large bite.
‘Come on,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Things’ll soon be humming. Get your magnetics ready! Stovepipes in the lead! We attack from the right of the road, and don’t let me see any itchy trigger fingers. Wait for the order!’
‘We getting anti-tank support?’ asks Heide, pompously.
‘Yes, up your arse,’ Porta laughs noisily. ‘If they’d got anti-tank guns to spare, they wouldn’t send us, now would they?’
Part way into the wood we meet a couple of sections from 7 Company. They are wildly excited, and go on about hordes of Russian tanks.
‘And they’ve infantry with ’em,’ shouts a Feldwebel to the Old Man. ‘2 Company’s been steam-rollered to bits. Not a dry eye left in the lot!’
‘Sounds pleasant,’ answers the Old Man, with a short laugh. ‘But that’s what we’re here for. To kill or be killed.’
‘Down!’ shouts Barcelona hoarsely, as half a dozen flares suddenly open up in the sky, making everything as light as day. The whole section is flat on the ground before he has finished saying the word.
An SP comes rushing along at top speed, bumps over the top of the hill and lands with a jangling crash on the far side.
‘Up with you,’ bawls the Old Man. ‘Move! Open line abreast! March! March!’
The section spreads out and lumbers, panting, across the uneven ground. I have the MG under my arm, supporting it on my hip. My finger is along the trigger-guard. My heart is beating so fast it is almost painful. I go rushing straight through some bushes, which tear at my face and hands. Blood runs down.
A little way in front of me Porta is running, his idiotic yellow topper on the back of his neck. Down in the valley the SP wheels round as if the driver had gone mad. The night fills with heavy thuds and brilliant muzzle-flashes. They give light enough for us to be able to glimpse half a score of T-34s. The SP s
tops with a jolt, and replies to the fire immediately.
From a row of ruined houses, long bursts of Russian Maxim bullets rush at us.
Some of the rookies throw themselves to the ground, and try to creep away from the hell of fire.
‘Get up! Get on!’ roars the Old Man, striking at them with the barrel of his mpi. ‘Who the devil told you to fall down?’
Breathing heavily we break into a run. We are now not much above a hundred yards from the closer of the T-34s.
Blue-green lightnings flame from the muzzles of Russian machine-pistols: Maxims spit wicked yellow flashes as they pepper us with their deadly, pearly chains of tracer.
I go down so heavily my face smashes into the lock of the LMG. I wipe my hand over it. I am bleeding freely, but have no time to think about that. I sight in on the muzzle-flame from the Russian SMG, press the butt of my gun into my shoulder and grip so tightly with my left hand that I almost get cramp in it. I send three short bursts at the Russian SMG. Then I’m up like lightning, run to the left and fall into new cover. I am hardly into it before a grenade goes off where I was only a moment ago.
A shell from a tank-gun passes close above my head and cuts Fahnenjunker Kolb in two with the efficiency of a circular saw. The blast from the exploding shell throws me far off to one side and tears the LMG out of my hands. I sob with terror and press my face into the ground. When the rushing in my ears stops, I put my hands out to feel for the LMG. Instead, my fingers find themselves touching a naked leg. I feel at it and cannot believe my eyes when I open them to look. A naked leg, torn off at the groin and blown out of both boots and trousers. I start to scream, and beat my fists on the ground, hysterically.
‘Get on! Get on!’ the Old Man chases me, bringing his mpi-butt down on the small of my back.
‘No!’ I protest, ‘I can’t go on!’
Heide grabs me brutally by the collar.
‘Get up, you yellow swine,’ he snarls, viciously. ‘Where’s your LMG? Don’t tell me you’ve lost your weapon?’ He throws me from him. as if I were a sack of rotten potatoes.
I fall, sobbing, on one knee, completely finished.
He points the muzzle of his machine-pistol at me, and cracks me hard across the face with the back of his hand. My helmet goes back on to my neck. Then, suddenly, it is all over. I am a normal, well-disciplined soldier again. The MG is back in my hands with the strap regimentally across my shoulder. My legs are going like runaway pistons.
I literally fly past Porta, who is in cover behind a woodpile, readying the stovepipe.
‘Hey there!’ he shouts cheerily after me. ‘Hang on. Don’t want you getting to Moscow before us an’ grabbin’ all the good cunt!’
A T-34 is hit just in front of me. A blinding sheet of flame goes up, and the tank breaks up with a metallic sound, like a giant fist crashing down on a tin roof. The explosion illuminates a whole row of wrecked houses. From off to the left come the hard cracking explosions of German stick-grenades. It must be Heide’s squad who’ve got within throwing distance.
Porta’s bazooka howls, and the passage of air from the speeding rocket almost tears my helmet from my head.
A T-34 goes up in a volcano of flame. Porta’s rocket must have scored a direct hit on its ammunition locker.
I am deaf for several minutes from the violence of the explosion.
‘Come on! Forward!’ roars the Old Man, his bowed legs cranking away.
I rush forward, shooting as I run at the dark figures over by the wrecked houses. Between bursts I hear the short, stammering bark of the Old Man’s mpi. A couple of yards in front of me I see a shadow which resembles a mole-hill, but is really a Russian helmet with its funny steel cockscomb. I shoot so low that the tracer scorches along just above the ground, cutting the Russian’s head in two.
‘Forward!’ the Old Man chases us on. ‘Forward!’ He pumps his arm up and down in the air, signalling to us.
I take cover behind a concrete balustrade, and lob a couple of hand-grenades over the rosebeds, in which leafless bushes stand closely ranked. I push forward between the flower beds.
‘Back!’ I scream, desperately, rolling head-over-heels down the slope.
I have run into three Russian SMG gunners, and they are sending a hail of bullets along the length of the hill.
‘No, damn that,’ roars the Old Man. ‘Forward! We’ve no choice! Up with you! Grenades!’ I look around me, timid and frightened, and I feel like running, dumping that cursed machine-gun anywhere, and running; running till I reach home again.
‘Come on! shouts Porta, waving to me. ‘Let’s kick Ivan’s arsehole up round his cars, so he won’t get to thinkin’ he’s winning the war!’
I jump to my feet and press on up the sleep slope. A couple of hand-grenades, and the Russian machine-gun nest goes up in a fount of flame. My feet seem suddenly light, as if they had grown wings.
Tracer bullets snarl and hiss past me. It seems incredible they can all miss. Running madly I reach the opposite stone balustrade, am over it, and rolling down the slope on the far side. Round about me I hear the sharp crack of tank-guns, and the hollow droning of the stovepipes.
Another T-34 explodes in a sea of red, glowing flame.
The rest of the section comes rolling down the slope after me.
Russian MGs hammer wildly. Three or four shadows flit past.
I thread a new belt into the LMG, and smack it shut far too noisily.
‘Give me some covering fire,’ the Old Man demands, hoarsely. ‘I’m going over that balustrade there, and as soon as I’m gone you come after me! And get the lead out!’
‘Very good, ‘I mumble, pressing the butt of the LMG into my shoulder and sending off five or six short bursts. The Old Man struggles up on top of the stonework, rolls over it and disappears. I jump up, and rush, bent over at the waist, across the open stretch, sweeping the LMG from side to side.
A green flare goes up, hangs in the heavens, and slowly dies away.
‘Done it again,’ pants Porta, pulling up alongside me.
A number of Russians come slowly toward us with arms above their heads. They stare at us fearfully as we search their pockets with nimble fingers. They have nothing on them worth bothering with. A few evil-smelling Machorkas, one or two greasy, much-thumbed letters.
‘They’re poor as us,’ sighs Porta, patting a shaggy Kalmuk on the shoulder. He is an elderly man with a large moustache, drooping sadly down over his mouth.
The last of the T-34s goes clattering off through the park. In the distance sounds of fighting can still be heard, but they ebb slowly away, and the silent blanket of night falls again over the scarred town.
The next day passes with one parade after the other. We are continually sent back to do it all over again. Which we don’t of course do. Instead we sit and play cards. In the end the people who lay on parades get tired of all the work it costs them. The hidden foreign weapons come back out again. A Kalashnikov is really better than a Schmeisser. For one thing it has a magazine holding a hundred rounds, and the Schmeisser holds no more than thirty-eight.
After a while everything is back to normal. Porta and Tiny tramp around again in their private headgear - tall hat and bowler. Albert is packed into his ginger-coloured fur. Heide is almost normal, and is no longer indignant over Albert’s racial cocktail. He does not speak to him more than absolutely necessary, however.
‘He looks like a shit-fly that’s burned its arse on a storm lantern.’ says Porta, as Albert sits down alongside Heide and starts showing him some photographs. Heide conceals his disgust, but cannot help studying them closely.
Leave is handed out generously, but only to married men with children, so that the Old Man and Barcelona are the first to go. We follow them all the way down to the leave train, and stand, waving, long after the train is out of sight, and even the sound of it has died away.
We go back to our billets feeling like small children who have been left at home on their own. Without the Old Man we feel
lost.
Then something else happens, which almost knocks our pins out from under us.
Gregor is leaving us, and for ever. We think it is a lie. Even when he is packing his gear, and sharing out the things he no longer has any use for, we can’t believe it. He shows us it in black and white. Army Staff has asked for him. He is again to be driver and bodyguard for his famous general. We go with him to the train, too. He is wearing a completely new uniform. They dare not send him off to report to a general in his worn-out front line kit.
‘You do look nice.’ cries Porta, admiringly. ‘They could put you straight on to a recruiting poster to bullshit idiots into the Army at a mark a day!’
We take leave of him on a platform filled with holes. Gregor leans far out of the window shaking our outstretched hands. As a general’s driver and bodyguard he has been allocated a seat in a real passenger compartment. He treats the MPs who examine his papers accordingly. Condescendingly, he looks the spit-and-polished MP up and down, and tells him to say Unteroffizier when he speaks to him, and stand to attention.
‘Anybody can bloody well see you’re General Staff now, ‘Porta nods, approvingly. ‘Give ’em some stick, the shits, but don’t forget you’re still one of us! If you happen to run across anything good, don’t forget Joseph Porta, Obergefreiter by the grace of God, is in the market for everything!’
The train departs and we slouch back to our regular routine. Soon, however, we are beginning to feel the need of excitement again.
We do not see much of Porta. Hauptfeldwebel Hoffmann is continually sending out office runners – hounds we call them – looking for him, but it is not often they find him. When they do find him it is because he wants them to.
He is spending most of his time with Vera, the deserted wife of the commissar. She is beginning to feel herself very truly liberated by the German Army, in the shape of Porta.
It is Sunday afternoon, and everything is peaceful and quiet. Snow falls softly and silently. There are no noises from the front line, which is by now far away and almost forgotten. Out on the parade ground Tiny is playing with a large, ugly dog, which resembles him not a little.