The Commissar

  Heavy infantry fire sounds from the far end of the town.

  ‘They’ve got shit between the ears,’ sneezes Gregor. ‘War-mad bastards. Why they got to always be shootin’? I wish I was back with my general. With him, war was fun!’

  ‘Not allowed to shoot MPs, is it?’ says Porta, mysteriously, and scrapes frozen snow from his boots.

  ‘Too true it ain’t,’ laughs Barcelona, swallowing a whole handful of throat pastilles. He has ‘found’ them on a body.

  ‘There’s a lot o’ things as ain’t allowed,’ shouts Tiny. Angrily, he picks up an unexploded hand-grenade and throws it through a window. ‘Fuck ’em all!’

  Jesus, Jesus, why is everybody always sneezin’ and freezin’ in this God-awful country,’ sniffles Porta. ‘Anybody know a cure for it? I feel as if hair’s growin’ out of the sides of my head, an’ the germs’ve built a barbed-wire entanglement in my throat!’

  ‘A Russian grenade up your backside, or perhaps a Kalashnikov burst straight into your napper’d clear that cold away in a second,’ says Gregor, with a less than humorous laugh.

  ‘They’re a certain cure, at least,’ the Old Man admits, scraping at his silver-lidded pipe with his combat-knife. ‘Colds are hell, and worst of all they’re not enough to put you in sick-bay.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ puffs Tiny. ‘I saw the MO yesterday. Threw me out ’e did, an’ threatened to ’ave me jailed for bleedin’ sabotage o’ the war effort.

  ‘“I got a fever sir,” I said. “52 degrees at least.”

  ‘“Up your arse, man,” ’e yelled.

  ‘“Where else, sir,” I answered, and then ’e went funny an’ started shoutin’. Off I went then, ’fore anythin’ irregular could start ’appenin’. I did manage to sneeze straight in ’is face, though. Give ’im somethin’ to think about when ’is thermometer registers 52°C.’

  ‘Whose people are you?’ barks a monstrously fat Leutnant, with a monocle flashing in his fleshy, white face.

  ‘Who the fuck’s askm’?’ comes, anonymously, from Porta, off in the shadow of the houses.

  The Leutnant goes into a rage, and demands to know their unit.

  ‘Push a gun-barrel up his arsehole,’ cackles Gregor, hidden in the darkness. ‘He’d love it! He looks like one o’ them as likes to get their shitters reamed out now an’ then!’

  ‘You’re insulting a superior officer,’ rages the Leutnant, his face tightening. ‘Who are you, you filthy man?’

  ‘’E’s a colonel in the Chinese bleedin’ Army,’ roars Tiny, happily. ‘Panjemajo, grabit*’

  ‘Shut it!’ warns the Old Man, well aware that their joking can have serious consequences.

  ‘Yes, but he is a Chinese colonel,’ roars Porta, whinnying with laughter. ‘In command of two regiments of Pekin paratroops, but all very secret, Herr Leutnant, sir. Even the Chinese ain’t been told, sir!’

  ‘’Ey there, Leutnant!’ Tiny bellows with laughter, and bangs his hands on his knees. ‘You gone the wrong way, you ’ave. Any minute now ol’ Ivan Stinkanovitch is gonna shoot that bleedin’ winder-pane out o’ your fat bleedin’ kisser, an’ send you flyin’ up to ’ave a fuck at the angels!’

  The Leutnant tears his pistol from his holster, cocks it theatrically and aims it at Tiny, who is lighting a big cigar with the air of a captain of industry.

  The Legionnaire swings his mpi down from his shoulder and sends a burst into the ground at the Leutnant’s feet. Bullets ricochet in all directions.

  The Leutnant drops his monocle. It smashes to pieces on the cobbled road surface.

  ‘We’ll get you a glazier, sir!’ offers Porta, as the Leutnant’s squad disappears down the street in disorderly flight.

  ‘You’re under arrest!’ screams the officer hysterically, grasping the Old Man’s arm.

  ‘Take your hands off me!’ snarls the Old Man, pulling away angrily. ‘You’re not in garrison here, Herr Leutnant, and we’re not your recruits! This is a front-line unit, and I’m its commander. You have nothing to do with us. We don’t know you!’

  ‘I’ll have you stripped,’ whines the Leutnant hysterically. ‘This is mutiny. I’ll get you a field court-martial!’

  ‘Do as you wish, sir,’ answers the Old Man, his eyes slitted with rage.

  ‘Knock’is bleedin’ teeth out,’ suggests Tiny with a wicked laugh, ‘an’ kick ’is arse’ole up round ’is ears afterwards!’

  An amphibian comes rushing down the street and skids to a halt in the slush, its nose pointing back in the direction from which it came.

  Oberleutnant Löwe springs lightly from the vehicle and walks, with long strides, towards the Old Man, who is standing with dirty, soaking wet boots and looking very sour.

  ‘So here you are,’ smiles Löwe. He touches his helmet brim with a large, mittened hand. He stares inquisitively at the fat Leutnant. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks harshly, fishing a bent cigarette from his breast pocket.

  The Old Man gives him a light, and nods his head in the direction of the fat Leutnant.

  ‘This officer came rushing down here, and started to tell me what to do with the section, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been explaining to him that I would prefer him not to do that.’

  Oberleutnant Löwe blows out a cloud of cigarette smoke, takes a quick look around, and understands the situation immediately.

  ‘Come with me,’ he orders the Leutnant, who is just about to open his mouth and give vent to his repressed rage. Löwe is already back in the vehicle alongside the chief driver, Obergefreiter Brinck. The Leutnant is hardly in his seat before Brinck stamps the accelerator down and is off in a shower of mud and snow.

  ‘Single file. Follow me!’ growls the Old Man sourly, moving off at the head of the section.

  ‘There ’e goes again. Rotten!’ says Tiny, with a hopeless gesture. ‘It ain’t my fault this time, any road. It was that bleedin’ officer as started it an’ then couldn’t take a bit o’ fun!’

  ‘It’s always the officers,’ says Porta, blowing his nose on his fingers. ‘They can’t keep their mouths shut when we’re talkin’. That’s tkeir trouble.’

  Gregor finds a furniture store, and we take up temporary quarters inside it.

  ‘Inspect for booby-traps?’ asks Heide, zealously, looking under a sofa.

  ‘Don’t change the positions of the furniture, an’ don’t, repeat don’t, touch the pictures,’ advises Porta. ‘If there’s a picture of Stalin, let it be. Our treacherous enemies like to plant small surprises under furniture and behind pictures. Turn Stalin’s face to the wall, my sons, an’ you’ll get the surprise of your young lives!’

  ‘Gawd, yes!’ cries Tiny. ‘’Member the time we moved that dead bleedin’ pig, an’ the entire village went up in the air, an’ took a motorbike platoon with it. The neighbours’ad tied the pig with a lead to the ammo’ depot. It was like the soddin’ world went off its axles, an’ I went up an’ kissed the soles of Jesus’s bleedin’ feet. There wasn’t nothin’ left o’ the pig, either. Not even a bit o’ pork to add some life to a fried egg!’

  ‘Anybody got any rifle oil?’ asks Heide, who is dismantling his machine-pistol.

  ‘Rifle oil?’ grimaces Gregor, contemptuously. ‘Pull your fucking pud, brother, an’ use what comes out of it. That’s what the rice-eaters use. Their army don’t let anythin’ go to waste!’

  ‘Shut up, you rotten swine,’ snarls Heide, in a rage, sending him a wicked look.

  ‘That’s enough,’ orders the Old Man. ‘I don’t want any more trouble. Shit between your ears, that’s what you lot’ve got! Every one of you!’ He throws himself down on to an embroidered sofa, and stares emptily at the ceiling.

  A distant rumble brings our heads up.

  ‘Tanks,’ says Porta, reaching for his topper.

  ‘Train goin’ through a long tunnel,’ says Tiny, stretching himself out comfortably.

  ‘Train? You must be wrong in the head,’ shouts Gregor, throwing himself down on the floor in terror. ?
??It’s a shell. A big un!’

  There is a deafening explosion.

  ‘Jesus’n Mary,’ yells Tiny, rolling himself into a ball and laughing madly. ‘Little bit closer this way, an’ we’d never’ve ever seen ’ome again. An’ poor ol’ Julius’s gun’d never ’ave been cleaned, neither!’

  ‘Fucking shit!’ screams Gregor, pushing his turkey-cock face through the broken window. Suddenly, he goes completely amuck, and empties a whole magazine into the darkness. ‘Shoot me!’ he yells, throwing a hand-grenade. ‘It takes twelve men to shoot one rotten, lousy soldier who don’t want to fight no more in this man’s army!’ He waves his machine-pistol in the air. ‘Get to it! I’ve had it! Fuck your rotten fuckin’ war! Stuff it! Stuff it up your arseholes, an’ shit it out again in a load of South American revolutions. Then stuff it down Adolf’s fuckin’ throat an’ make him thank you for the gift parcel.’

  The Old Man and Barcelona wriggle across the floor to get hold of him. He is standing on the spring mattress of a double bed, hopping up and down. He has a fresh magazine in his hand, but cannot get it into his machine-pistol. ‘Oh God!’ he screams. ‘There’s none of us ever goin’ to get home again! The neighbours’ll shoot our fuckin’ German arses off!’

  The Old Man slaps him hard, twice, across the face.

  ‘Nazi bastard,’ shouts Gregor, his eyes rolling madly. He swings the muzzle of his mpi round in circles. ‘You don’t know who I am. Me an’ my general’s took out a patent on this war. You lot’s only here to get shot at!’

  ‘Battle strain,’ says the Old Man, slapping him again across the face. Barcelona twists his arms up behind his back, and forces him to drop the machine-pistol.

  ‘Get your traitorous hands off me!’ howls Gregor. He kicks a steel helmet from one end of the furniture store to the other.

  He fights furiously with the Old Man and Barcelona. He thinks they are a firing squad come to carry him off to execution.

  ‘Death makes a man want to meet death!’ he screams out into the room. His eyes are bulging wildly. ‘But it’s easier if you take some of ’em with you, an’ can get down there where God an’ the Devil’s barterin’ souls!’

  ‘Always the bleedin’ same,’ sighs Tiny, from his resting place in a broad four-poster bed. His grey bowler is pushed down over his eyes, and a fat cigar hangs from his lips. ‘Goin’ under together is also a kind o’ pleasure, as Moses said to the soddin’ Gyppos, when they all drowned in the Red Sea!’

  ‘Up my fuckin’ black arse,’ yells Albert suddenly, jumping to his feet with a long howl. He rushes across the floor of the furniture store and bangs into Porta who falls across Heide, scattering the parts of the machine-pistol across the floor.

  Heide lets out a roar, and tackles Albert just as he is about to go through the door.

  ‘You stinking black rat,’ he rages. ‘Nobody gets away with that with me!’

  A new, giant shell comes roaring over, and we all go down on the floor. The night becomes one long, shuddering, thunderous explosion.

  ‘What the hell’s happening?’ shouts Barcelona hysterically, as the great concrete building begins to shake like a sapling in a storm. Shrapnel splinters come from all directions. They hammer against the walls, showering us with mortar dust.

  The grey office windows at the far end of the long storehouse tinkle to pieces in a rain of glass shards.

  ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ roars the Legionnaire, releasing the safety catch on his machine-pistol.

  ‘The Beast of the Apocalypse,’ answers Obergefreiter Brinck, happily, coming crawling in through a shattered window. ‘You hide yourselves real good. Took me two hours to find you.’

  ‘You must be mad,’ the Old Man scolds him. ‘You could’ve got yourself shot!’

  ‘War is a risky business,’ grins Brinck carelessly, starting to rig up a field telephone on the floor.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ asks Porta, wonderingly.

  ‘Army field telephone model 1932,’ declares Brinck happily. ‘The Signals coolies’ve put down a cable. I’ve suggested code name “Sauerkraut” for you. Command’s got code name “Eisbein”. If Ivan gets on to it he’ll think we’ve opened up a chop-house. Try to ringan’ order a table he will, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t get too worried, though. The neighbours’re shooting off like mad, and the cables are gettin’ shot up quicker’n Signals can repair ’em!’

  A little later Gregor goes amuck again. He is halfway through the shattered window before the Old Man and Barcelona get hold of him. They give him a going-over with their fists. It is the only effective treatment for frontline madness.

  They have hardly finished with him before Albert starts up again, howling like a wolf. He runs his head into the wall. Then he draws his combat-knife, and begins to stab and slash madly at a sofa. Screaming wildly, he cuts it to pieces. Springs fly up and hit him in the face, driving him even crazier. In the end he becomes so entangled in wires and furniture webbing that we have the greatest difficulty in freeing him.

  ‘That black monkey’s gone out of his mind,’ rages the Old Man. ‘Take away his weapons, before he kills some of us!’

  The scream of a shell makes itself heard from out in the darkness. The flash of the explosion lights up the night. It is followed by another explosion, and then another. Shells continue to hammer down, seemingly endlessly. Beams and tiles crash around us. A large door comes flying across the room and cuts off the head of an infantryman who is on his way up the stairs.

  ‘And they tell us this shit of a town’s been cleared,’ yells Porta, wriggling further down in the four-poster bed alongside Tiny.

  ‘I think they’re gonna attack,’ says Barcelona, listening carefully. ‘Listen, that’s 75 mm!’

  ‘Jesus’n Mary,’ mumbles Tiny, burying his head under a pillow. ‘Those bleedin’ shells drive a feller barmy!’

  From the street comes the clatter of rushing boots.

  The Legionnaire peers cautiously out of the broken window.

  ‘Par Allah!’ he cries, fearfully, ‘it is Ivan! He is all over the street, out there!’

  ‘Ivan?’ asks the Old Man. ‘Impossible! That means the whole division’s been turned back!’

  Porta’s constantly surprised, birdlike face peers carefully from the window niche in the end wall. The hair seems to stand up on his head. He closes his eyes and emits a grunt of fear.

  ‘The devil, it’s the whole neighbour’s army,’ he shouts, gripping his LMG, and dashing straight across the storeroom towards the street door.

  We take the plank fence almost together. Hand-grenades explode, hollowly, behind us. From the darkness comes the muzzle-flash of an mpi.

  I throw a hand-grenade at the flash, and take a row of empty dustbins in my stride. They go clattering away into the night.

  A figure whirls up into the air, and seems to hang for a moment on the top of the flame from an explosion.

  We throw ourselves flat, as their artillery lays a carpet of fire over the large park.

  With fear gripping at my entrails I press myself down into a small stream, without knowing how I have got there. I don’t even feel the coldness of the water, or hear the ice cracking under me. Huge shells fall behind me. A burning house crashes in on itself.

  I realize I must get away from the stream. The artillery will centre in on the burning row of houses behind which I am lying.

  Immediately after the next rain of shells I jump to my feet and rush straight across the road through the park. I throw myself down, senselesly, into a shell-hole which still stinks of iron and powder smoke. The shelling rises to a furious crescendo. It is as if the entire world is being turned inside out.

  They are using everything they’ve got. Field-guns, howitzers, mortars, tank and infantry weapons. The mortars are the worst. They come almost silently and explode with a wicked sound. I am so frightened I feel like screaming, and running away as fast as my legs can carry me. But I have been long enough in this filthy war to know it would be certain death
if I did. I force myself further down into the narrow shell-hole, making myself as small as possible. I rest my chin on the butt of my machine-pistol.

  A shell falls not far away from me. My steel helmet is pushed back by the blast. I am unconscious for a second. The helmet strap has almost strangled me. My brain feels empty. My hands are cold as ice. It seems an eternity before life flows slowly back into me.

  Now the tanks come. They are not far from my shell-hole. I hear the rattle of their tracks. T-34s and the enormous KW-2s speed through the park. The screams of men dying under their treads cut through the noise.

  I hear German machine-guns firing madly, sending glowing lines of tracer through the darkness.

  Five or six flares explode in the heavens, and turn the night to a ghostly, pale sort of day.

  I look up cautiously and catch sight of the T-34s on their way through the park, alongside the path. Infantrymen can be clearly seen sitting up behind on the tanks.

  Now the anti-tank guns start up. When the 88 mms go off, the sound is that of a huge steel door clanging shut.

  A T-34 explodes in a ball of fire; another one goes up.

  I hear tracks rattling close to my shell-hole, and the ticking ring of an Otto engine.

  A T-34 stops close by, and I feel the warmth of its exhaust blow down over me. It is so close I could put out my hand and touch its tracks.

  My heart almost stops beating from fear. Shivering with terror I bore my fingers into the earth and try to get even closer to it. The T-34’s gun goes off, and it feels as if my head is about to burst open. The force of the explosion is impossible to describe. A tank-gun is the devil’s own personal invention.

  An Unteroffizier from 3 Section arrives at a run. A machinegun burst from the T-34 rips across his chest. He is smashed over backwards. The LMG flies from his hands, his steel helmet following it.

  A Fahnenjunker runs, limping like a winged bird. He stops, and stares in panic at the huge, armoured colossus. The tank-gun flames again. The Junker falls forward like a log.

  I think for a moment that he is dead, but there is still life in him. His fingers claw at the earth and he begins to crawl slowly towards my hole.