‘Corpse robber,’ screams Heide, gazing with open disgust at Porta’s rusty dental forceps.
‘Corpse robber?’ says Porta, blankly. ‘Couldn’t be! Not dead yet, are you?’
‘I’m going to charge you,’ snarls Heide, furiously. He dabs at his neck, where a shell-splinter has dug a deep furrow.
‘Outside!’ shouts the Old Man. ‘Get this area cleaned up and quick about it. It’s full of aspiring heroes looking forward to dyin’ for the great Stalin!’
‘I’m on my way,’ shouts Porta. He runs off along the houses with the LMG in his hand, supporting grip out.
A clumsy Russian hand-grenade comes flying through the air and falls, smoking, at Tiny’s feet. With a resolute kick, worthy of a soccer international, he sends it flying back. Not for nothing is he the regiment’s top goal-scorer.
Porta sends a couple of short bursts up at some gaping window-openings, and jumps to cover behind a burnt-out transport vehicle.
‘Either them shits’re down in the cellars,’ yells Tiny, falling full-length in a shower of mud and half-melted snow, ‘or else they’re upstairs.’
‘Where?’ howls Porta, crossing in long jumps to the opposite side of the street. He goes down, like lightning, flat in the gutter as he hears the feared mooing of a ‘cow’ on the way. A row of cobblestones flies into the air.
‘Get down, damn you,’ shouts the Old Man to the section, signalling with his arms.
Albert is behind a pushcart lying on its side, firing away with an MG-34 as if he were aiming at breaking the world war record for disposal of most ammunition in the shortest time.
Barcelona drops down beside him, panting. ‘What the hell are you shootin’ at, you black ape? We got to account for that ammunition!’
‘Shit on that, man!’ wheezes Albert, grey-faced with terror. ‘No fucking Commie bastard’s gonna pull the carpet out from under my fallen, fuckin’ arches!’
‘Stop it, you mad sod,’ shouts Barcelona, giving the LMG a kick which sends it flying out of Albert’s hands. Shaking his head from side to side, Albert leans up against the wet wall of a house and stares with a lost look at his LMG, which lies hissing in a drift of filthy snow.
‘What’re you sitting here moping for?’ asks Porta, emerging from a house behind two prisoners with hands raised above their heads. ‘You look like Frankenstein playin’ the part of the Mummy.’
‘Now I’m not supposed to shoot any more,’ grumbles Albert. ‘This is the shittiest war that ever was, you know that, man!’
‘’Course you can shoot,’ answers Porta. ‘Bang away at ’em, son. That’s what the army’s paying you for.’ With a broad grin on his freckled face he disappears round the corner with his two prisoners. He will sell them to a prisoner collection squad, out looking for medals.
‘Mount!’ orders the Old Man. ‘Panzer Marsch!’
‘The Führer has won the war,’ declares Heide, proudly, as we roll past long rows of Russian soldiers standing with raised hands. They have a lost look about them.
‘There’ll only be room for two kinds o’ people, now,’ grunts Tiny, bitterly. ‘Them peacocks as does the orderin’ about, an’ all the other bleedin’ idiots as stands to attention, in the sacks as ’olds their bones in place, an’ screams ’Eil ’Itler!’
After a short, bloody battle we push forward straight through Poltawski. At the edge of the roads lie corpses clad in grey prison uniforms. All of them have small bullet entry holes at the back of their necks. Cheekbones jut sharply through the thin parchment skin of their faces, and their teeth are bared in ghastly skull-fashion.
‘Liquidated,’ confirms the Old Man. He sends a long, brown stream of tobacco-juice over the rim of the hatch. ‘They’re as bad as our rotten lot.’
‘Not long since,’ says Barcelona, leaning out of the cleanup waggon’s turret to get a closer look. ‘Blood’s still fresh and drippin’.’
‘But why’ve they shot ’em?’ asks Gregor. ‘And right out here on the road, where we’re coming bashin’ along.’
‘Couldn’t keep up,’ says Porta, knowledgeably, ‘caused trouble and slowed down the rest.’
‘They bloody well can’t do that,’ says Gregor, bending over the body of a woman. ‘They bloody, fuckin’ can’t!’
‘You’ll see worse than that,’ answers Porta, laconically. ‘Wait till the pendulum swings back, an’ it’s us who’re on the run with the neighbours snapping at our arses. Then you’ll see what we can do!’
The Old Man lights his silver-lidded pipe in silence, and wishes inside that he could get his fingers on the man who had carried out this massacre.
The rows of dead seem never-ending, but no more than an hour later the maelstrom of war has driven the episode out of our heads, like many other things.
Physical death lies in wait for us round every corner. We cannot choose death, but must live, and carry on as well as we can. War is a disease, and it is best not to think of it too much, but to forget the impressions its symptoms leave on us. If we didn’t we would all very soon go raving mad.
The section takes up position alongside a small river, which runs, yellow and cold, down to the distant sea.
Porta has placed the SMG behind a heap of potato-sacks. Potatoes are as good as sandbags for stopping bullets, he says. Barcelona wants the vehicles ready to go, so that we can move off at short notice if necessary, but meets with wild protests when he demands that the drivers remain in their seats.
‘There’s not gonna be much time,’ he tries to explain to the angry drivers, who are afraid of remaining alone in their vehicles. ‘I want those bloody waggons ready to move while there’s still time!’ he orders, raging.
‘Up you and your time,’ shouts Porta, disrespectfully. ‘Sit in your sardine-can yourself if you want to. I’m staying here with the popgun. When the neighbours come knockin’ on the door’ll be time enough to take off. I’m gonna be one of the survivors of this world war. I’m not goin’ to get fried in me own fat, if some Commie sod or other gets the idea of tacking a magnetic onto my backside.’
In the light of a huge fire, which is raging down at some grain storehouses, Tiny comes crawling out of a window opening dragging a large chest behind him.
A Maxim sends a line of tracer bullets at him.
‘Stop that bleedin’ waste o’ bullets,’ he yells, waving a threatening fist at the invisible Russian positions. ‘Got earth where your brains oughta be? Or shit, is it, maybe?’
‘I’ll smash you to bits, if you don’t leave that chest lie,’ shouts the Old Man, furiously. ‘Get back to your rotten squad. I see you looting one more time an’ you’re for a court!’
A flare goes up. A slowly sinking comet with a colourful tail of smoke behind it. Everyone stands completely still in the blinding white light. There are sounds all around us. Heavy boots tip-toeing, nervous hands cocking weapons, battle-knives ringing, bullets being pushed into breeches. The mumbling noises of death. We see nothing, hear only the noises coming from the darkness. We are never quite sure whether they are real or whether our nervous imaginations are deceiving us.
Porta raises his head and sniffs like a tensed-up hunting dog.
Slowly, unbelievably slowly, the cursed flare sinks down towards the earth.
Without making the slightest noise I turn the LMG.
‘Holy Saint Agnes of Bielefeld,’ whispers Porta, in open excitement. ‘If what I’m smellin’ is right, I will burn a candle in the synagogue of my heart for the God of Germany for the rest of my life.’
There is a sharp cracking explosion above our heads, and we press ourselves down into the mud. One of the very largest flares flowers against the night-dark heavens.
‘Life ain’t nothin’ but one wide-open, stinkin’ black arse-hole,’ curses Albert, his teeth chattering, from a deep cellar opening. ‘Tonight my girl’ll be dancin’ at the zigeunerkeller, an’ they’ll all be starin’ straight up her clean-shaven black cunt every time she swings her legs. After that she fucks wit
h the whole rotten garrison. That’s what a man has to put up with!’
‘She black, too?’ asks Gregor interestedly, his eyes watchful above the MG barrel. He is certain there are several companies of Russians sneaking around out there in the darkness, getting ready to storm our positions and cut all our throats.
‘I’m a paleface compared to her,’ mumbles Albert, running his hand over his face. ‘She’s black as only God’s own people can be!’
‘She a whore?’ asks Porta bluntly, showing his face over the top of a sack of potatoes.
‘You say that once more, man,’ snarls Albert furiously, ‘an’ I’ll pull that maggoty white skin of yours down over your stinkin’ German face! She’s an artiste, man! She dances French in the Zigeunerkeller. And she’s got her name on the posters outside! An’ I love that girl, man, even though she is a French nigger woman.’
‘Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus,’ shouts Porta. ‘Can I believe my ears. Get that flare out quick. Sucking pigs, God dammit, sucking pigs!’
As soon as the flare dies, Porta and Tiny race off like hungry hounds on the scent with tongues hanging out. They take no notice of the Old Man’s angry shouts ordering them to come back to the unit.
‘It’s desertion,’ shouts the Old Man into the dark. ‘I’ve had it now. My patience is at an end!’
‘They smell food, mes amis,’ the Legionnaire chuckles merrily. He lights a long cigarette from the butt of the previous one. ‘The whole of the Red Army, even, would not be able to stop them now!’
Tiny falls only once during his mad rush forward, but tumbles twenty yards on down an incline, and brings up against a tilted tractor. Soon after he runs across a Russian answering a call of nature behind a bush.
The Russian’s pistol has only half cleared its holster when Tiny’s close combat knife thuds into his chest. ‘The good die young,’ growls the big man, as his knife goes home.
‘I was so lonely,
You were so charming,’
sings Porta, happily, in a hoarse Louis Armstrong voice, as he bends over a litter of six grunting sucking-pigs. One of them rubs itself lovingly against Tiny’s jackboots. He lies down in the mouldy straw, and begins to play with the piglets.
‘Cut that out, now,’ warns Porta, ‘or it’ll be the same game as with that big sow we got fond of. The one that died of old age!’
‘Why d’you sing that foreign stuff?’ asks Tiny, wrinkling his brow.
‘I dunno,’ answers Porta. ‘I think it sounds nice. I love Louis Armstrong. Nobody can sing like them darkies!’
‘Adolf’s black-listed ’im too,’ says Tiny, sadly. ‘I’ad a good record of ’is. They knocked the shit out o’ me once up in Stadthausbrücke 8 for ’earin it. Gawd, ow they did belt me. Then they made me eat the bleedin’ record afterwards, just so I’d understand that that kind o’ untermensch shit wasn’t what us Germans listened to.’
‘Adolf’s mad as a hatter,’ says Porta,’ but we’ll get him some day. Be patient, my son. The sun always comes out again after the storm.’
‘I can’t stop thinkin’ about it,’ says Tiny, scratching one of the pigs thoughtfully behind the ear ‘I reckon we ought to shoot’is Austrian bonce off. But break’is left leg first. Then’is right. Then both arms from’is finger joints upwards, so’e’ll know we mean it serious. In between times we’it ’im in the balls, if’e’s got any. Then we wind up by pourin’ petrol all over ’im an’ puttin’ a match to Mm like a bonfire. That’s exactly what I think we’d ’ave to do to Mm to make every-thin’ even Steven!’
‘Take it easy, we’ll fix him when the time comes,’ promises Porta. ‘He’ll be sorry he ever took on the job of Führer. Vote for Adolf and die young,’ he laughs out into the night.
A shell explodes, with a crash, somewhere inside the town. A couple of machine-guns rattle viciously, but soon go silent. The plopping of a mortar sounds as a finale.
The Old Man bursts in on them in full battle-kit. He is covered with mud from helmet brim to boot-tops.
‘You gone stone bonkers? What the hell are you up to?’
‘Take a look,’ grins Porta, pleasantly. ‘We’re engaging some Commie pigs.’
‘Heavenly Father,’ groans the Old Man, despairingly. He throws his mpi, clattering, across the mud floor. ‘What have I done to be made leader of such a lot of crazy sods as 2 Section? The neighbours are attackin’ along the whole front, and close to rollin’ us up, an’ what are you doin’? Sitting here playing with some bloody pigs. You go on report for this, blast your eyes, you do!’
‘Why’re you always so mad at us?’ asks Tiny. ‘You think too much about the army an’ the bleedin’ war, you do. Enjoy life. It’s short enough as it bleedin’ is!’
‘Shut your trap, you,’ hisses the Old Man, viciously, pointing at Tiny with a stick-grenade.
There is the heavy thudding of distant shell-fire. In between the sharper crack of tank guns can be heard.
‘Maybe it’s about time a feller got ’is valuable arse movin’,’ says Tiny, listening critically to the guns.
A couple of Maxims start up a crossfire, but it is nervous shooting and does us no damage.
Porta tucks a kicking piglet under his arm. Tiny slings his mpi and takes one under each arm.
‘You take one too,’ he says to the Old Man. ‘We ought to ’ave enough to be able to give everybody a bit, so they won’t get snotty!’
‘You can’t run about carrying pigs in the middle of an attack,’ rages the Old Man, copper-coloured in the face. He strikes at one of the piglets.
Porta peers out of the door, but quickly closes it again.
‘What’s up?’ asks the Old Man, his face twitching nervously.
‘Nothin’ special. Only a Russian colonel, with a machine-popper under his arm, and his eyes full o’ German corpses!’
A rain of bullets strikes the walls of the house, almost tearing the door off its hinges.
‘Nice way to knock on a door,’ growls Tiny, getting behind a heavy supporting tree-trunk, still with his squealing piglets under his arms.
The plopping of mortars sounds continually. The whole area is bombarded with earth, stones and shrapnel from the explosions.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ says the Old Man. ‘The neighbours’11 be here before we know it!’
‘Jesus’n Mary,’ shouts Tiny. ‘Them crazy neighbours is shootin’ with’eavy stuff! You’d think they was tryin’ to kill us poor bleeders or somethin’!’
One of the piglets intensifies its squeals. Its side has been cut open by a piece of shrapnel. Tiny is covered with blood.
‘Kill that blasted pig,’ shouts the Old Man. ‘They’ll hear it all over Russia.’
Tiny slits its throat quickly. The squealing dies away in a few small final grunts.
‘To die so young,’ he says, compassionately.
It is a heavy, icy-cold morning, and fog lies like a blanket over the landscape.
Porta stops behind the cover of some bushes. He withdraws the flare-pistol from its canvas holster.
‘None o’ that shit,’ the Old Man warns him, nervously. ‘We can’t see anything by it anyway.’
‘I know that,’ answers Porta, stretching his arm upwards at an angle with the flare-pistol clutched in his hand. ‘It’ll just make Ivan know we’re awake an’ ready. Then, while the silly sods are sittin’ there afraid they’re gonna get their arses shot off any minute, we sneak quietly away from the party.’
The flare hangs, for a few short minutes, over the terrain. Then it is dark again, and we can see nothing at all.
‘At the double, that way, along the old position,’ the Old Man orders me.
Panting with effort, I rush along the narrow trench, in mud up to my ankles. I stop for a moment at a corner. I need a cigarette. I see Russian faces under funny-looking helmets. They are looking straight down at me from the parapet of the trench. Everything happens faster than my eyes and brain can register it. The dark morning fog is filled with flame, smoke and w
ild cries. Behind me and in front of me there are Russians who have jumped down into the trench. The muzzle-flash of a Kalashnikov, going off just in front of my face, blinds me for a second. Maddened with the fear of death I fall over backwards, come up again and engage a Russian who is just as frightened as I am. I strike at him blindly with my combat knife, and feel it get home in his guts. In a close embrace we fall to the muddy floor of the trench. I wrench my knife out of his body, and stab at him again and again. Hot blood spurts into my face. Then I am up again, and run in panic, without knowing which way my feet are carrying me.
The Russians behind me throw hand-grenades. The night lights up with their explosions.
Porta and Tiny come rushing towards me. I throw myself down to avoid their rattling machine-pistols.
The Old Man is behind them. Close behind him come others.
A wild, bloody hand-to-hand fight begins. I rip a Kalash-nikov from the hands of a dead Russian lieutenant, and begin to fire blindly at whatever is in front of me.
We thirst for blood and revenge. We want to kill. We are happy to have hit the hated enemy in the back.
A bare-headed Russian corporal stands in front of me, with both hands above his head. I empty half of my magazine into his chest, and smash the butt of my weapon into his face.
Suddenly everything is still. The fighting is over as suddenly as it began. Some minor skirmishing, the report will say.
Porta has a bottle of vodka in his hand. He pulls the cork with his teeth, takes a long, gurgling swig at it, and gives out a long, rolling belch. The blood comes back into his thin cheeks, and his eyes begin to look more lively. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he bends down and picks up a rifle-grenade. He screws off the cap, and puts the grenade into his pocket. Ready for use, if we run into any more surprises.
With mpis at the ready, and fingers on their triggers, Porta and I jump through a street-door, ready to mow down anything moving. We know that those left behind in such towns are crazy fanatics, totally insane, completely regardless of their lives as long as they take some enemy soldiers with them.