The Commissar
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘Not here. If the tank sees him, we’re both finished!’
Engines howl, and the T-34 begins to move forward slowly, the earth shaking under its steel tracks.
The tracks come slowly towards me, cowering there in my shell-hole. Feverishly I tie two grenades together to make a heavier charge.
The T-34 swivels halfway round. Its tracks throw earth and stones high in the air. They rain down on me.
The tank slides sideways down into a ditch. I am about to throw the grenades, when it turns half round again on its own axis, and rattles toward the Fahnenjunker. He presses himself down, desperately, behind a large round stone, then gets halfway to his feet. The tank knocks him back down and crushes him under its tracks. A bloody pool is all that is left of him.
The T-34 makes off with a thunder of engines. It smashes over a wooden bridge, which collapses under its weight in a rain of splintered planks and beams. Two infantry men, who were hiding under the bridge, are crushed into an unrecognizable mass.
How long I run before I come to a halt I never know. I have lost all idea of the passage of time. My knees tremble under me; my thigh muscles are hard and knotted. My mouth feels as if it were full of sand. In a panic I spring across the ditch, and push my way through the bushes lining it.
Porta catches me by the ankle, and I fall forward.
‘Calm down,’ he says, easily. ‘It’s not that bad. The neighbours are just pointin’ out to us that they’re still around. They don’t want us to go thinking we’ve won the war just yet!’
‘Where’s the Old Man?’ I ask, breathlessly.
‘Lying over there, enjoying the cool of the evening together with the rest of the boys. We didn’t get off too badly, but there’s not a button left of 3 Section, and they say the division’s got its balls shot off. Arse-an’-Pockets has made a real mess of this one!’
The Old Man comes sliding down between the rose beds, with Gregor at his heels.
‘We’ve got to get through now,’ says the Old Man, breathlessly. ‘Ivan’s over on this side with all his pots an’ pans. Half the division’s got the shit shot out of it. Let’s move. Go down behind that furniture factory. There’s a bit more room there.’
‘There’s tanks behind us,’ I put in. ‘Both T-34s and KW-2s, and they’re banging away like mad.’
‘Sod them,’ snarls the Old Man. ‘Don’t look at ’em. We’ve got to get through.’
‘Tiny,’ he calls, softly.
‘’Ere I am!’ answers Tiny, avalanching down past the rosebeds.
‘Got the stovepipe* still?’ asks the Old Man.
‘Too right,’ grins Tiny, ‘an’ a packet o’ acid drops for it. Its Dad’s Day in Russia y’know!’
Barcelona looks over the top of the roses. ‘Adjutant’s just been here. Wants us to work our bloody way up to the sunk road.’
‘That clever sod could make a pancake without breakin’ eggs,’ snarls Porta, furiously. ‘This feller’s not goin’ anywhere near any sunken, rotten road. All the bloody Red Army’ll be goin’ that way an’ll shoot us full of holes. Those people from the officer factory’ll kill the lot of us before they’ve done!’
‘We’re going back,’ says the Old Man, getting to his feet with his mpi at the ready.
‘Follow me!’ he orders, jumping over the roses.
Suddenly I begin to feel the cold, and the water which has seeped into my boots.
‘Heavens above, but I’m cold,’ I mumble, pulling my collar up around my ears.
‘You’ll soon get warmed up,’ grins Porta.
‘Spread out, blast your eyes,’ commands the Old Man. ‘How often do I have to tell you. Don’t crowd together!’
Behind us we can hear the rumble of the field-guns, and, in between the sharp crack of tank-guns.
Two tanks are on fire. Tall flames shoot up from them. One of them explodes in a rain of red-hot steel splinters.
A Russian in a flapping brown cloak rushes past us with his long queerly-shaped bayonet fixed.
I raise my machine-pistol and send a short burst into his back. He gives out a long, ululating scream, and his rifle and bayonet fly from his hands.
I follow the others down a partly overgrown path, jump over a wrecked anti-tank gun and go head over heels down a steep flight of steps.
‘Keep your distance,’ shouts the Old Man. ‘You want to all get killed at the same time? Spread out, you rotten sacks, spread out!’
‘Mines,’ shouts Barcelona, warningly, stopping short as if he had run into a wall. ‘Mines,’ he says again, standing as if rooted to the ground. He is in deadly fear of mines, having been blown up by them several times. Even though these experiences occurred a long time ago, he has never forgotten them.
The whole section has stopped. It is best not to think too much about mines. It can stop you moving forward altogether.
‘Get on, get on,’ the Old Man shouts, giving me a push.
A flare bursts above our heads. The 25 men of our section turn into 25 statues. We stand, for several minutes, defenceless, bathed in its deathly white glow. Protecting darkness falls around us. The night seems to be filled with running, leaping figures; everywhere is confusion. We run around in the dark, Russians and Germans together. Hand-grenades are thrown into houses. Wounded and dying soldiers scream shrilly.
In the middle of the street a T-34 spins wildly round. It explodes in a blinding flash of light.
From the centre of the town come explosions and the noise of battle.
‘Hope they don’t smash up Tanya’s place with all their shooting,’ says Porta, worriedly.
‘P’raps it’s the commissar, on his way to pick up his woman,’ says Gregor, with a short, sad laugh.
‘It’s all a fart in a colander,’ sighs Porta. ‘The longer I live the more I realize that the only thing of value anybody’s got, is his own poor, rotten life.’
We throw ourselves down, tiredly, behind a small hillock.
‘Ducks!’ cries Porta, assuming his pointer attitude. He is right. The quiet quacking of a flock of ducks can just be distinguished.
‘If we can get hold of a couple of ’em, I’ll do you duck an’ Portuguese rice,’ he promises, licking his lips hungrily at the thought. ‘It’s a feast for the Gods! First you take some rice – that is when you’ve got your ducks – then some onions they’re easy enough to find – and so is a bunch o’ carrots. Finally some tomatoes, oil, salt an’ pepper. The rice has to be boiled in duck-fat, adding water slowly as it comes to the boil, says the recipe, but I prefer wine to water. Smooth out the rice nice an’ even, an’ lay your portions of duck carefully on top of it. Then, chop your tomatoes fine together with the onions and spread ’em out over the whole thing. I tell you, my sons, the aroma is that beautiful you’d think it was a Christmas Eve before the war.’
‘Shut your trap, man,’ snarls Albert viciously, from the darkness. ‘You make everybody more hungry than he is, just listenin’ to you talk.’
‘Shut it the lot of you,’ snarls the Old Man, in turn. ‘Ivan’s smack in front of us!’ He takes his cold pipe from his mouth, and beckons me over to him. ‘Listen good, now’ he whispers. ‘You go first over the stream, but quietly as possible, understand? The rest of us’ll wheel round in an arc behind the ruins over there.’
‘Why me?’ I protest, nervously.
‘Because I say so,’ answers the Old Man, nastily. ‘Get off with you! But keep your ears open and send up a green flare if you run into the neighbours.’
The ducks scatter, quacking, in front of me, as I wade cautiously into the cold water. The icy teeth of it bite into me. After a few minutes I can no longer feel my fingers. I stop for a moment by a deserted MG position, and pour water out of my boots. They’re the most stupid boots in the world, these German leather dice-cups. I wish the devil had the genius who invented them. The Russian puttee over a shorter boot is a thousand times better. Our boots are only good for goose-stepping in.
Behind a larg
e farmhouse I meet the section again.
‘Spread out,’ orders the Old Man, waving his mpi at us as if we were a flock of hens he was shooing out of his way.
Cursing we crawl between bramble hedges. The thorns tear our skin, and it hurts more than ever because we are so cold.
‘You two stay here,’ the Old Man turns to Gregor and me. ‘But don’t, for God’s sake, start shooting all over the place. Fire only at muzzle-flashes. Albert! Crawl over to that turnip heap, and cover the house, but God help you if you make a noise! They’re here, an’ we can count on ’em being frightened all to hell. Frightened people’ve got sharp ears an’ sharp eyes, and they let off at any sound they hear.’
‘I’m frightened all to hell, too, man,’ whines Albert, piteously. ‘Jesus but I’m frightened! Think of gettin’ knocked off here. And the little I’ve got out of my short life.’
A hoarse, stifled cough, out in the darkness, makes us start and listen shakily.
Like a couple of snakes the Old Man and Barcelona glide away over the wide field.
Porta presses his face down into his cupped hands to stop himself sneezing, while Albert puts both hands to his ears in terror.
Porta draws his breath in deeply a few times and smiles happily, at having succeeded in stifling his sneeze. It would have been a catastrophe. It doesn’t need much to set the guns going off at you, when you are lying right under the noses of the other army.
A loud sneeze comes from the pig-sty. It is followed up by three or four more, sounding loud as gunshots in the night.
‘Ivan’s as snotty-nosed as we are,’ whispers Porta pityingly. ‘Shame for him, it is.’
‘It’s this rotten war that’s to blame,’ mumbles Gregor sourly. ‘If you don’t get your turnip shot off, you catch all sorts of aches an’ pains. I hurt all over, and I can’t get a pill even for any of it. And they talk about human rights. A feller’s hardly started living before they get hold of him and knock every single, individual trace of a thought out of his head. I’ll never forget Paust, the Feldwebel I was a rookie under. He’d got a face as red as a lobster, and his breath stunk like a shithouse. He had gaps between his teeth, an’ the teeth were yellow as ripe cheese. I was dumb enough to jump to one side instead of catchin’ a fuckin’ dummy gun he threw at me.
‘“I’ll remember you,” he screamed, breathin’ cheap beer and stinking fish straight into my face.
‘Later in the afternoon I complained that the helmet they’d issued me with was too little, the greatcoat was too big, and the boots pinched my toes. That started something, all right. For the next three weeks we had our gasmasks on from morning to night. We only ’ad ’em off when we were eating. In the latrine we still had ’em on. When the rest of the company got fifteen minutes rest, Paust nobbled me.
‘“Attention!” he screamed, “gasmasks on! Forward march! Double march! One-two, one-two, one-two!”
‘I’m doubling straight for the barracks wall. Then comes the next order.
‘“Down! Forward crawl! Get that arse down. Prick an’ balls into the ground, you wicked little shower o’ monkey’s afterbirth, you!”
‘Straight through a pool o’ mud he drove me, an’ down through a water-filled tank trench like I was some kind of a submarine.
‘“Back an’ start again,” he shouted, disappointed that I’m still able to breathe.
‘When we’d got to the middle of the day and the sun was so high there wasn’t a single patch o’ shade anywhere on the parade-ground, I wasn’t runnin’ any more, I was staggerin’. The rubber facepiece of the gasmask was going in and out like a bellows. My rifle felt heavy as lead and was slippery all over with sweat. The heavy uniform you could’ve wrung out like a dishcloth, an’ God help you if you so much as loosened a button of it. In the afternoon they took us for a walk in the country. I got promoted, straightaway, to number one on the MG. Paust chased me on an’ on over them ploughed fields with that fucking machine-gun on my back. When he shouted “Down!” I went down like a log, never caring where I landed. Then we practised advancin’ in short rushes. I tell you, sometimes I’d run straight into a tree and the machine-gun’d give me a real welt across the back o’ the neck.
‘Then one day I gave up.’ Gregor throws his arms wide, and stares, cautiously, towards the long wing of the farmhouse where we know the Russians are taking cover. ‘That afternoon, when I went down I stayed down. I’d got it into my head that I wasn’t going to take any more of it.’
‘Feldwebel Paust came rushing over to me, blowin’ on his whistle for dear life. I didn’t see him, but I could hear him. I’ll never forget that voice. I’ve often prayed to heaven to let me meet him out here somewhere.
‘“So you won’t get up then, machine-gunner Martin?” he howled at me. “By God, I’ll smash you, man, I’ll finish you right off! I won’t leave you be, till you’re nothing but a lump o’ quiverin’ jelly, beggin’ to be let die!”
‘I lay there in the middle o’ the ploughed field, and got my strength back with the help of hate. I didn’t know then, that that was just what he wanted. To be a good soldier you’ve got to be a good hater! If you don’t hate with all your might you can’t kill. Hate’s the strongest source of human energy. But there I was now, lying in the middle of a fuckin’ Westphalian field, outside the old Papal town o’ Paderborn. My whole face felt like a glowing, bubbling pancake, and I was near drowning in me own sweat inside the gasmask. The glasses of the eyepieces was so wet you couldn’t see through them. The heel’d fallen off my one boot. My uniform was torn to ribbons. My knees hurt, and blood was pouring from them. I think I’d sprained an ankle, but I forgot that when Paust an’ three others got me up and chased me on.
‘I threw myself down beside a tree, and could hardly hear Paust’s voice screaming at me. I knew he wouldn’t stop ’til tank-soldier Gregor Martin was crushed like a fly on the wall. I’d really wanted to be an officer, that’s why I’d volunteered, but that day by the tree on the bank of the river decided me that I’d never be an officer.
‘“Into the river,” he ordered me. “Forward, march! One-two, one-two, you sad sack!”
‘I got halfway to my feet, but fell again. My legs were simply unable to carry me.
‘The whistle shrilled.
‘Then I crawled. He wanted to see me before a court-martial for refusing to obey an order, and you know how frightened we all are at the thought of a court-martial. Better the traditional Hell of the priests than Germersheim. I got to the water and crawled out into it like some fucked-up kind of crocodile. On the way I lost my steel helmet, but Paust kicked it in after me.
‘“Helmet, on!” he bawled. “I’ll tell you when to take it off!”
‘I crawled on the river bed, followed it down, I hadn’t strength enough left to swim. Two Unteroffiziers had to pull me out. An ambulance picked me up a little later. At first I thought it was taking me to the mortuary! The MO asked me who’d done it to me. But I knew the answer to that one. I said I’d fallen out of a window.
‘Eight days I was in hospital, and ten minutes after I got back with the rookie company they started again where they’d left off. I was out there goose-steppin’, with instep stretched, in the Westphalian bloody fields.
‘“Chest out! Tighten your arse!” screamed Feldwebel Paust, his voice echoing back from the woods. The instep had to be up at the level of your waist-belt.
‘Yes, we learnt it, and so effectively that we could have marched straight to our deaths with our insteps still pointing at the sky.’
‘C’est la guerre, we are the human offal of the war,’ whispers the Legionnaire, quietly. ‘It is our fate, so has Allah willed it, and this we must accept!’
We lie silent for a while, thinking over his hopeless soldier’s philosophy.
‘What’s this, what’s this, now,’ the Old Man scolds, softly. ‘Still lying here?’
‘We’re gone,’ says Albert, and disappears quickly into the bushes.
Gregor is at my heels. It
is so dark we can only see a couple of yards in front of us.
I stumble over something which proves to be a tipped-over wheelbarrow. I curse quietly. A battered helmet with a comb on top comes up on the far side. Faster than thought Gregor throws his bolas. It wraps itself round the Russian’s throat. He manages no more than a hoarse rattle before he goes down.
‘What the hell are you up to?’ asks Albert, nervously, pressing himself to the ground in fear.
‘Oh, Jesus, Jesus!’ he cries as he catches sight of the dead Russian. ‘I’m soon gonna get a nervous breakdown! The devil take that ol’ pappy of mine as just had to beat the drums for the Prussian Hussars! He shoulda stayed home in his grass hut, he should, and not gone gettin’ the best son he had mixed up in this terrible German war of revenge.’
‘Hell’s bells!’ shouts Gregor, in terror, as a colossal red flame splits the darkness. Like a fiery spire it shoots up towards the heavens. It folds out into a huge mushrooming cloud, like some horrible mirage, suddenly appearing from nowhere.
Half-blinded and deafened we stare into the devilish redness. It grows and grows, and becomes a brilliant carmine umbrella of enormous proportions. It spits out yellow and white spurts of fire, like flaming sprays of roses. Slowly the giant, raging fire-flower becomes millions of licking tongues of flame. The whole of the heavens and the battleground around us are coloured red.
Porta and two Russians come running out from the glowing redness; it is one thunderous, indescribable inferno.
‘Run dammit!’ cries the Old Man, desperately, tugging at my shoulder.
With a feeling of unreality I follow him. My feet move automatically.
A Russian, with a Kalashnikov slung across his chest, runs past us. A blast of heated air throws us to the ground.
In shock, we run and creep our way out into the ice-cold water of the stream. It is beginning to warm up, slowly. I dip my field-cap in the water and hold it over my face for protection.
‘Tovarisch!’ screams a terror-stricken Russian, as we run into one another out in the middle of the stream. ‘Idiots!’ he yells, pointing to the roaring sea of flames. Then he dashes on, the water splashing up around his running feet.