The Commissar

  ‘We walked backwards and forwards a bit, enjoyin’ the sight. But it clouded over when we got to the supply troops, the blue cornflowers. Good Lord, what a mess! But that’s the way it always is with echelon troops. Yokels, the lot of ’em. They don’t even know the difference between right and left. You give ’em a bit of hay round one ankle an’ straw round the other and then you shout “Hayfoot! Strawfoot!” Their horse detachments can’t find a girl who’ll have anything to do with them, and have to have a go at the horses when they get the chance.

  ‘My general sentenced the whole cornflower bed to be executed, so at dawn I ran our hand lawnmower through the lot of ’em.

  ‘The panzer troops, the pink roses, made a better showing. What a straight-backed lot! I felt proud to be a Panzer Unteroffizier. We stayed a long time looking at them and in the end we’d convinced ourselves things weren’t as black as they looked.

  ‘“Takes balls to be a panzer soldier,” my general said, rattlin’ his false teeth.

  ‘We nodded in passing to the engineer troops, black tulips. They’re the coolies of the army anyway. But when we got to the catering lot, the cabbage bed, we got a shock. The Moses dragoons were standing there droopin’ like so many gonorrhoea-infected pricks.

  ‘My general sentenced them all to death on the spot. “To the gas-chambers with them,” he snarled, without a thought in his head of how important a catering corps is.

  ‘Everything went wrong when we got down to the orchards, and inspected the scarecrows. They were wearing Russian uniforms. My general got a funny look on his face when we found the first one with unpolished boots. The two next had their coats buttoned crooked, and the last was wearin’ his cap back to front.

  ‘My general nearly swallowed the gardeners, who come on the run. We chased ’em up through the orchards with that many threats, and so fast, their tongues were hanging out of their arseholes an’ their piles were up around their ears.

  ‘An old, white-haired feller cracked open like a maidenhead on a summer night, an’ threw up all over the general’s boots. My general pulled out his pistol and aimed it at this untermenscb and of course, he fainted from fright. They sent him to the front the day after, to spend the rest of the war with a corpse-collection unit.

  ‘We were in a black humour, as we marched back to the castle. The Angel of Victory received only a perfunctory salute in passing. The sentries slammed the doors open, but one of them made a mess of it and his door swung back and hit my general right in the face. You should’ve heard him. He didn’t shout, like some stupid Unteroffizier. but what he did say, through his nose, sat right in the bullseye. He literally shot those two guards down with his words.

  “‘Never beat around the bush with people of that sort,” he twanged down his nose.

  ‘Yes, my general did just what he liked with every man in our division. He signed death warrants without even reading ’em. We didn’t waste much time on that sort of thing, anyway.

  ‘In the corridor we ran into the Catholic padre, who was so fat he had the shakes permanent. Every part of him shook like a jelly. My general stopped in the corridor without acknowledging the fat padre’s salute.

  ‘“Well, it’s you is it, reverend padre? It’s not often you put in an appearance, but you are, perhaps, busy preparing the way for the many soldiers who fall for the Fatherland?”

  ‘“Very good. Herr General!” mumbled the sky-pilot weakly, looking as if he was about to drop dead on the spot.

  ‘My general had pulled his long neck down into his collar at the sight of the Staff Padre, but now he suddenly shot it right out again, and screwed his monocle more firmly into his eye.

  ‘“Yes, you must be very busy, reverend father,” he spat out. The nostrils of his eagle-nose vibrated as if he were smelling a corpse. “Your boots are not polished, but there are perhaps other clothing regulations for the gentlemen of the Corps of Padres, with which I am not familiar? Three days confined to quarters, reverend padre, and you will report every other hour to my Adjutant with well-polished boots and equipment. It is possible that you have been allowed to slouch around in a state of unregimental filthiness in the division you came from, but not here in my division!”

  ‘So we left the Jesus dragoon standin’ there to think over things. After we had slashed at our riding boots with our riding whip a few times we ordered war games for the whole garrison. That’s what we always used to do when the officers were goin’ to get some stick. They were all there when we arrived. My general understood this sort of thing. He was always master of the situation. Nobody ever took him for a sleigh-ride. My job was to look after the cardboard clock, so I had a good view of what was goin’ on, and I stood so’s I could have a good grin now and then without ’em seeing it. Our division had the best terrain model of anybody in the whole Army. My general’d looked after that. There was dozens of streams and rivers, and guns and tanks; and bridges all over the place that we could blow up just before the enemy got to ’em.

  ‘My general stood there for a long time, glarin’ nastily at all the nervous faces round the war table. Then he gave ’em a long speech about what was going to happen if Germany, as usual, got its arse kicked up round its ears by our rotten enemies.

  ‘“This time they will drink their ale from our skulls,” he predicted. “Our sexual organs will decorate the walls of their officers’ messes.” But, he swore by our monocle, before it gets that far – and may God forbid it, he added, in the tone of an archbishop – we must see to it that our enemies get to know us. “We shall bombard them with fire from our long-range artillery,” he explained, waving his pointer backwards and forwards over the simulator table. “Then our armour will roll forward in a destructive flying V formation. Our heavy Tigers will take away their appetite for war. Those who are left we will smash under the tracks of our self-propelled guns, and those who have gone into hiding we will blast with our flamethrowers.” He hammered his pointer down on a village, destroyin’ it with one blow.

  ‘All the officers turned their eyes sadly towards the shattered village. The terrain was a German landscape, you see, with German cows and our fat German peasants on it!

  ‘“Germany will never capitulate, gentlemen, mark my words,” hissed my general, lettin’ our monocle fall out of his eye. Suddenly he realized what a terrible lot of nonsense he was talking. When he had taken a break, in which he punished a couple of Leutnants by postin’ ’em away to the infantry for gigglin’ at a dirty story, he nodded to the Chief-of-Staff. “The Wild Boar”, a dried-up stick of a Major-General with a stiff leg and a patch over one eye, took over, and the war stimulation was on the go.

  ‘The first who got the hammer was a Rittmeister who was going too fast. He mistook his own lines for the enemy’s and let a couple of Stukas smash up his own armour that was waiting in ambush for the neighbours’ T-34s. That Rittmeister was letting his tears fall in a front-line regiment the very same night. My general didn’t even give him the regulation three days leave. Nobody could feel himself safe with us. Just when they were enjoying things with the staff and countin’ on an uncomplicated life, offthey went, all of a sudden, to a front-line unit, the anteroom to the Valhalla mess.

  ‘A bit later a Major and three Leutnants got themselves removed from division’s protectin’ arms, for goin’ the wrong way with the enemy’s tanks.

  ‘My general got more and more annoyed, and his eyes were shooting out wicked ice-blue flashes!

  ‘I could see what way things were going. Before these simulated games were over the division’d have a noticeable shortage of officers. It was lucky though, I thought, that they weren’t real officers but only reserves – war surplus shit so to speak. But our German God had kept the best to wind up with. Every bit of our concentrated anger fell on the Adjutant, the rotten swine. He got himself that infiltrated in Ivan’s infantry that he lost a whole battery of SPs. My general shot his scraggy neck half a yard up out of his collar, like a submarine commander who was tryin’ to sink a
battleship. The adjutant feller got a fit of the Andalusian shakes, and started his AA batteries shooting down our own air support. They came down over the whole simulator area like a shower of confetti.

  ‘I was grinnin’ like mad up there alongside my cardboard clock. It was a lovely sight to see that lousy Adjutant in trouble. He looked like a constipated rat. My general told him a lot of things in a voice that nearly cut the boots away from under him, and he slunk off looking like a half-drowned suicide candidate.

  ‘Then my general stopped the war game before the incompetent officers ruined our army completely. He made a long speech to those remaining, in which he told them what his feelings were with regard to civilians in uniform. He wound up by telling them that Attila had been much better off than the general of today. He wasn’t encumbered with reserve officers, but had born warriors around him who knew how to swing a club and split the skulls of other tribesmen.

  ‘Off we went then, and banged the door after us. I left the cardboard clock at five minutes past twelve. Just to give the clever fellers something to think about.

  ‘Then we changed uniform, and put on our battle kit with our hand-artillery on our hip.

  ‘“To work,” ordered my general, and out he goes through flocks of cacklin’ geese and poultry that thought they owned the road.

  ‘“Hell’s bells,” I thought. Time to pray. I knew my general, and had a pretty good idea of what he might get up to when he was in one of his black moods.

  ‘Just after the birds’ tattoo we get up in our staff car, and drive down through the darkened villages with our divisional standard on the front mudguard and blue slits on the headlamps, so’s nobody’d be in doubt of who was coming. My general muttered away darkly during the whole of the trip. “Honour be to God in the highest and peace on earth,” I thought.

  ‘My general had decided to inspect the coolies stationed round about in the civilian quarter. We dropped down on the divisional gaol like delayed action lightning on the Day of Wrath. The guards were sitting around playing cards with the prisoners and their weapons were hanging on the coal-racks out in the latrines. You should’ve heard my general, and seen those guards and prisoners jump around like cockroaches on a red-hot fryin’ pan. In the end when they’d all been ordered into the cells. I was commanded to lock the doors an’ bolt ’em. When I handed the keys over to my general, he threw ’em as far as he could over on the other side of a muckheap.

  ‘Finally we dismantled their machine-pistols and spread the parts all over Westphalia, so they’d be really busy when they got the order to parade for inspection with mpis. Yes, my general knew how to turn civilians into reasonable imitations of soldiers.

  ‘The next place we rolled up at, the officer in charge appeared on the doorstep in pyjamas and slippers. My general made a terrible noise.

  ‘“The enemy is in the outskirts of the town,” he roared, pushing his beaky nose almost into the sleepy major’s face. “The enemy is on its way into the town!” he repeated.

  ‘“That’s not so good,” mumbled the major, and offered my general cognac for an eye-opener.

  ‘“My dear man, have you not just heard that the enemy is here with his armoured spearhead almost standing on your toes?” said my general, with shattering calm.

  “Well I suppose there’s only one thing left for us to do.” The major smiled, and pulled his pyjama trousers up around his waist. “And that’s to get off out of here, before we get the shop all smashed up! But what the devil’s the enemy want here?”

  ‘Now we practically jumped out of our riding boots. We dropped our field-monocle, which got smashed, but thank God we always had an extra one in our breast-pocket.

  ‘“You give the alarm!” roared my general, in a rage.

  ‘“Very good, Herr General, sir!” answered the major, and he shuffled out an’ put on his tin helmet. Then he put his head out of the door, and shouted “Alarm!” three times into the night-still village street.

  ‘Nothing happened for a while, and then the telephone rang, very angrily. My general picked it up.

  ‘An angry voice asked what kind of idiot it was who shouted “Alarm!” here in the middle of the night.

  ‘“It’s me.” shouted my general, in a voice which made the telephone mouthpiece shrink in on itself. “An alarm has been ordered, because paratroopers have surrounded us!”

  ‘“You must have eaten an old boot an’ it’s disagreed with you.” laughs the voice at the other end of the line. “Go in and get some sleep, you war-crazy idiot, and wait with all that shit till daylight. No paratrooper in his right mind’d dream of landing here with us! We’re not doing anybody any harm!”

  ‘My general threw the telephone from him in disgust, and sent the major a destroying general’s glance.

  ‘“You’ll hear from me,” he promised him, darkly.

  ‘“Very good, Herr General, sir,” piped the major, saluting with the wrong hand to his steel helmet. He had only now realized who his guest was.

  ‘“What a spineless individual,” snarled my general, as we crashed through a new village,” he’ll end up wishing that it had been enemy paratroopers who visited him rather than us!”

  ‘We came down like two emissaries from outer space on some quarters where a rifle regiment had found protection from the night damp, and were lolling in broad peasant beds.

  ‘A tall, thin beanpole of a Feldwebel, with his steel helmet turned round backwards on his head, coughed out a kind of report. When he had finished and was standing and wondering what else he could find to report, he realized that he had forgotten to call the room to attention. The coolies were lying around with their heads on the tables, snoring, an’ not givin’ a damn for standing guard.

  ‘“Sound the alarm, man,” screamed my general. “The enemy is on its way into town!”

  ‘“What?” grunted the Feldwebel, fearfully, breathing cheap schnapps straight into my general’s face. “What?” repeated this sketch of a soldier, scratching himself violently on the backside.

  ‘“Sound the alarm, for hell’s sake,” screamed my general again, nearly frightening the life out of the company cat, which was lying fast asleep alongside the stove. It sprang straight up in the air, and came down standing stiffly on all four legs.

  ‘“Servus, Herr General, sir!” it meowed.

  ‘The tin-hatted beanpole began thinking so hard, dents appeared in his helmet. He reached for his belt and pistol, which were hanging on a hook. Then he pissed off over to one of the sleepin’ beauties an’ began to shake him awake.

  ‘“Herbert,” he yelled. “Wake up, damn your eyes!”

  ‘“Sod off!” answered Herbert, throwing a sleepy punch at him.

  ‘“It’s important, Herbert! Come on! Get up!” the beanpole implored him.

  ‘“Go over’n wake up the OC, and tell him the enemy’s here with tanks an’ all sorts of ironware!”

  ‘You should have seen my general! He looked as if his favourite football team’d lost an’ he was goin’ to have a Greater German stroke any minute. Then he went green, an’ finally blue in the face. He simply couldn’t get a word out for several minutes, something which only happened infrequently. But then he got his voice back, with a vengeance.

  ‘“We’re at war, man.” he screamed. They must’ve been able to hear him down in the south of France. “Any minute now the enemy’s tanks will roll in and tear the flesh from our bones. Sound the alarm. Stuff 3* man, damn your eyes!”

  ‘“Very good, Herr General, sir,” mumbled the Feld-wrbel. scratching his head, thoughtfully, under his steel helmet.

  ‘“Get your fingers out, Herbert! Sound the alarm Stuff 3! Wake up the section commanders. Tell ’em the British are here with their tanks. They’d betterget their gear together, loo. so’s we can get off out of it before we get took prisoner. Jump to it. Herbert. Ain’t von found out there’s a war on yet?”

  ‘“British tanks, Herr Oberleutnant, sir,” grinned “Beanpole”, hitching up his pistol b
elt which had slid down round his backside over the hips he hadn’t got any of.

  ‘“God have mercy on us,” cried the fat man, in terror, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

  ‘“I’m sure he will have,” barked my general. “But you had better help yourself a little first, my good man.”

  ‘A leutnant came sailing along just then, dressed in riding breeches, slippers and a pyjama jacket with red stripes.

  ‘“The CO requests to know what the devil’s going on, and why all this shooting in the middle of the night?”

  ‘My general stared in amazement at this strangely-clad officer.

  ‘“Tell me now, my good man. Is this a messenger service or a Prussian infantry regiment?” and I can tell you he gave that Leutnant in slippers and pyjama jacket a goin’ over it was a treat to listen to! Oh, but it was a lovely rocket.

  ‘When he ran out of curses and threats he went spur-jinglin’ over to an anti-tank gun that was standing, getting bored to death, in between some bushes. Without glancing either right or left, and without a thought for the consequences, he released the firing mechanism and pulled the lanvard.

  ‘“BOOM!” thundered the 75 mm.

  ‘“There goes auntie’s rock cakes off of the plate,” I thought, as the shell went screamin’ off into the night, waking up all the German birds in their cosy nests. Germany is used to gettin’ into wars, but it’s still not all that often they fire guns off back home. The shell went through three houses in a row. causing quite a bit of rearrangement of the furniture. It finished up inside a Panzer Spähivagen* inside the ammunition locker. Lord what a row the ammunition made goin’ off. That scout car got itself spread out over half of Westphalia! Some bits went into the Rhine, and some splashed into the Weser. But what else happened was that the life came back into that sleepy regiment. How they did mill about. Most of ’em ran for their lives, but a few war-mad sods wanted to fight back. What a sight the German sun did see when it finally came up. It came close to goin’ back down again, I can tell you! An armoured company battled bravely for two hours, an’ only gave in when the house they were defending was reduced to ruins. Then they discovered, to their horror, that the enemy was their own motorcycle battalion.