The Bloody Road To Death (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

  Porta blows cigar-smoke gently into Tango’s face.

  ‘Look now, Tango my young son, you exist only because I am a good kind man. Your time in the Greater German Wehr-macht ends just as soon as I feel I do not want you to breathe the same air as I do any longer. Sons like you, who can’t count to twenty without taking their boots off’d better be glad for every minute we let you walk about upright on the face of the earth.’

  Wolf laughs loudly with satisfaction. He appreciates a joke, always excepting when it is against himself.

  ‘Did you know you look silly when you laugh?’ asks Porta, contemptuously.

  Wolf swallows hard, and is about to say something coarse, when he remembers the attractive furs. He slaps Porta on the shoulder with affected comradeliness.

  ‘When there’s a war on then’s the time for far-sighted people to do business. I know them zinc cases well. They’re almost mine, but I will naturally withdraw and leave them to you, if you will sell me the furs.’

  ‘You’d be a hit in the comics,’ grins Porta, calling to a pretty, long-haired girl who is sitting on the lap of a wachtmeister of artillery.

  ‘What do you want?’ asks the girl with a cold look on her pretty Slav features.

  Porta lifts up her dress.

  ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours!’

  ’Pig!’ snarls the girl.

  ‘Obergefreiter,’ replies Porta, bowing from the waist.

  ‘Cultivated lot, these Grecos,’ grins Wolf. ‘State their name, soon as you meet ’em. Jokin’ apart, Porta my lad, what’d you say to six pounds of caviare, five cartons of Camels and a whole case of Slivovitz for your worn-out furs, and that’s top price.’

  ‘Six pounds of caviare! I’d have fins back of my ears and gills up my arsehole before I’d finished eating that lot,’ grins Porta, sarcastically. ‘Start talking about Scotch whisky and coffee and we might have at least a starting point.’

  They start with a bottle of schnapps and after three hours of heated discussion, liberally sprinkled with threats, the deal is on. They have a drink on it and with uncertain steps go about their individual affairs, Wolf with the furs under his arm. He decides to go to bed early with a Blitzmädel to celebrate them.

  ‘It’ll be the most lively bang those two’ve ever had in their lives,’ grins Porta expectantly.

  ‘He’ll let your guts out for you,’ prophesies the Old Man, darkly.

  Porta nearly strangles on his food at the thought of Wolf and the Blitzmädel’s night with the fleas.

  ‘Wish ’e’d lend them Chinese bleeders one of ’em,’ says Tiny. ‘What I wouldn’t give for that pair to get to know them bleedin’ fleas!’

  Next day Wolf is back with his whole gang. The Blitzmädel is sitting between him and one of the Chinese in the armoured Kübel. The fleas have left her looking like a boiled lobster.

  ‘What the devil’s the matter with your face?’ shouts Porta, with pretended surprise, viewing Wolf’s swollen features with interest.

  ‘You don’t think, do you, you twistin’ Yid bastard, that you’re going to get away with doing me? screams Wolf, grinding his teeth and hurling the furs at Porta’s head.

  ‘Shut your ugly great trap, Wolf. You make more noise’n a pig with his bollocks caught in a meatgrinder,’ answers Porta, with a condescending air. ‘Didn’t you go on your knees to me to let you buy those lovely furs? I didn’t want to sell them.’

  ‘You’ll pay for this!’ roars Wolf, aiming his Mpi at Porta. Raging, he kicks one of his Chinese.

  ‘Relax, relax,’ Porta reproves him in a fatherly way, ‘People can die of high blood pressure!’

  ‘Let’s have my goods again,’ shouts Wolf, beside himself with rage. ‘You’ve got your bloody fleabags back!’

  ‘Think you’re talking to an idiot?’ laughs Porta, shaking his head. ‘If you return the furs that’s your business, but repayment for them! Not here, my old son! Didn’t you know we’re in Greece now?’

  ‘You knew there was fleas in those furs!’ rages Wolf, scratching himself desperately.

  ‘True,’ admits Porta nonchalantly.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ snuffles Wolf.

  ‘Didn’t ask, did you?’ smiles Porta. Wolf explodes in a long animal howl, and throws out bloody threats of strange and unusual revenges.

  ‘You make a bad impression soon as you open your mouth,’ says Porta. ‘Even a starving Italian would be scared of accepting a free box of spaghetti from you!’

  ‘I’ll pull your bloody arsehole up over your ears,’ promises Wolf, gnashing his teeth.

  ‘We’ll spit on your grave,’ promises Tiny, from the darkness of the hut.

  ‘You’re a cheap skate, Wolf,’ sneers Porta, ’and cheap skates get caught.’

  ‘Quiet boys,’ says Wolf, patting his slavering wolfhounds. ‘You two are gonna get a nice little present. You’re gonna get a wicked bastard’s head in a nice pink box all tied up with a pretty blue ribbon.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe what were goin’ to think up for bleedin’ you,’ shouts Tiny from the window of the hut.

  ‘Think of that, now!’ Wolf laughs jeeringly, and spits in Tiny’s direction. ‘You? Think? I’ve seen your fuckin’ papers, son. You had 39 at trainin’ school for intelligence and to get even that they had to knock that headful of shit you’ve got up against a concrete wall for ten days. Since then your IQ’s been dropping slow but sure. You’re the boy they have to write his boot-size on his forehead for, when he’s pickin’ up new ’uns at the stores. Adolf’s soddin’ scientists at Buchenwald are beginnin’ to wonder. If they can teach a nuthead like you to shoot off a gun, maybe they ought to be gettin’ started on the apes!’

  ‘Talk, talk, talk! You spew shit like a underground paper spews bleedin’ lies,’ shouts Tiny from the hut. ‘I’m a bleedin’ sight better off’n you are, Wolf! I got papers say I’m barmy, but I ain’t bleedin’ silly, me old son, an’ don’t you forget it. I’m crafty, I am, an’ it’s the crafty bleeders like me as’ll come out of this war alive. The clever bleeders gets an ’ero’s bleedin’ death, am I right?’

  ‘Chief Mechanic Wolf, you are the long-lost son of a five mark whore, and as such we’ll push your nipples out through your back with bullets first chance we get,’ promises Porta, solemnly.

  There’ll be one for your bleedin’ ’ead, too, you dirty dog,’ echoes Tiny, happily.

  ‘We’ll upt a charge from a sawn-off shotgun straight up your arse, Wolf,’ howls Gregor, excitedly.

  ‘All right you shiteatin’ shower! The real war starts now for you lot,’ roars Wolf, slapping his Mpi. ‘I’m gonna take you one by one!’

  ‘If your mother was an invalid then you’re a motherfucker, Wolf!’ shouts Porta, spitting out of the window.

  ‘Everybody knows why you never get leave,’ shouts Gregor triumphantly. ‘You’ve worn your five sisters’ cunts out!’

  Wolf’s threats begin to take form the very same day.

  It is sheer luck that Porta does not die of poisoning. He picks up two black puddings from the cook-waggon and is persuaded to give one of them to an importunate dog. Two seconds later the dog falls dead. Pale and shaking he throws the rest of the food to a pig which goes off to eternity as quickly as the dog.

  The next day they find scorpions in their boots, and in Porta’s greatcoat pocket the Old Man finds a tiny poisonous snake whose bite kills instantly.

  Tiny gets thrown through the roof of the latrines when an Smine goes off just as he has sat himself down to run through a new batch of filthy pictures.

  It gets so bad we do not dare to move outside alone. We don’t even eat from a Red Cross parcel without trying it out on somebody else first.

  Late one night we are sitting in the hut making plans to kill Wolf. Porta cannot accept any of the suggestions.

  Tiny grinds his forehead up and down the wall. He has heard that this helps when one has to think deeply about some problem.

  If we was to meet ??
?im accidental-like up on the mountain road,’ he says, cunningly, ’some ill as the ’uman flesh is heir too, might overtake ’im?’

  ‘Yes, he might, for example, accidentally get himself strangled,’ sighs Porta, taking a swig of vodka.

  ‘A fellow I knew in Hamburg once, died of heart-failure when some friends came to visit him with knives,’ says Gregor, swishing a well-honed battle knife through the air.

  ‘Wolf ’s not that nervous. And it’d be hard to get near enough with a knife,’ mumbles Porta, sadly. ‘I’d pay money to get the chance.’

  ‘Pas question! We must discover some particularly refined method of doing it,’ says the Legionnaire.

  Porta goes to the doorway and stares out. The big electric globes swing in the breeze. He thinks of how Wolf would look swinging there head downwards with a broken neck.

  That dirty ol’ bleeder,’ shouts Tiny, banging his head against the wall. ‘I’ll blind ’is bleedin’ mother I will!’

  ‘What the hell to do?’ sighs Porta dropping down on the doorstep. ‘We can’t winkle him out. He’s fortified himself in there like Adolf in the Wolf’s Lair.’

  ‘Every Wednesday he goes up into the mountains to meet somebody,’ says Barcelona, suddenly. ‘I heard it, by accident, from a German nigger who’s a regimental musician in the infantry.’

  Tiny sends out a long, shrill whistle.

  ‘An’ if ’is bleedin’ motor was to break down up by the bleedin’ pass an’ the bleeder was to get out to ’ave a look what was up with it?’

  ‘With a little help from somebody, he might fall and hurt himself badly,’ says the Old Man, after a few moments of thought.

  ‘Per’aps a long knife might be somewhere in the bushes even, an’ ’e’d cut ’is guts out on it, eh?’ grins Tiny, happy at the thought.

  ‘Not in the guts,’ Porta rejects the idea. ‘A bullet in the forehead! The way they do it to the cattle in the slaughterhouse.’

  ‘An’ then we’ll sling ’is poxed-up brain over to Crete an’ let the wild dogs ’ave a feed on it,’ shouts Tiny, jubilantly.

  ‘What a lot of lovely blood’d pour out of that bastard,’ Gregor roars with laughter.

  ‘We’ll give it ’im right straight between ’is little ratty eyes!’ shouts Tiny, drawing his Nagan and sighting out of the window.

  ‘They’ll cut your heads off for murder!’ prophesies Heide, blackly.

  ‘Only people who get caught get executed,’ says Porta, confidently. ‘Boys who know how to shoot can bring off a bit of dirty work like this with no trouble at all. They’re the kind who get the rewards and a pat on the back afterwards.’

  ‘That’s the way society wants it to be,’ sighs Gregor. ‘It’s the dumb boys who get buried with their heads between their knees and called criminals. The wide boys do the same and get praised for not getting caught.’

  ‘That Wolf, ’e’s the cowardliest German pig I ever did meet,’ shouts Tiny indignantly. ‘I’m shadowin’ ’im yesterday in Athens, an’ all the time ’e’s takin’ cover be’ind women an’ children. ’E knows bleedin’ well as none of us’d kill them just to get ’im. Any rate I only know of one on us as’d do it.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ asks Gregor.

  ‘Me,’ says Tiny, laughing noisily.

  ‘What about this?’ shouts Tango. ‘We could send him the Chinamen’s heads in hatboxes.’

  ‘His five sisters and the dogs’d be better,’ suggests Porta. ‘He doesn’t give a fuck for the Chinks!’

  ‘It might shake ’is nerve,’ considers Tiny. ‘So much, maybe, that ’e’ll ask our pardon an’ call off this private bleedin’ war.’

  ‘We’ll find out how good he really is before very long,’ says Porta, biting into a large piece of pork.

  The same evening a Molotov cocktail is thrown at us, as we are on our way to the Greek priest’s gambling joint. Tiny gets his uniform burnt off and only saves his life by jumping into the river.

  A few days later Porta gets leave to visit a feldwebel of Pioneers, an acquaintance from the explosives school at Bamberg.

  He watches, with interest, preparations for a major test of Russian toluol. The charges are in sticks and are placed by the Pioneers around a huge block of stone. Porta states later that it was three times the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.

  The feldwebel explains the technique to Porta as proudly as if he himself were the inventor of toluol.

  ‘Does it work every time?’ asks Porta inquisitively. ‘Aren’t there ever any duds?’

  ‘Bang every time,’ guarantees the feldwebel.

  When everything is ready, the squad takes cover. The feldwebel attaches two wires to a small black box.

  ‘Now you’ll see something,’ he says to Porta, making some small adjustments to the box. He presses a button and the huge rock becomes a great cloud of dust.

  ‘Well I’ll be . . .’ cries Porta, admiringly, and is allowed to hold the apparatus in his hands. ‘Looks a bit like these new push-button radio controls. Push a button and some nancy-boy in Paris starts whiffling, push another and you get a shower fiddling on cat-gut in Vienna!’

  ‘You could say that,’ laughs the feldwebel, ‘but the result’s a bit different.’

  After they have blown up a couple of wrecked tanks, Porta helps the Pioneers to pack up the explosives and take private note of where his friend the feldwebel packs the electronic detonator.

  He is in fine fettle when he stops an SS amphibian, a few hours later, for a lift. He leans back happily in his seat and puts his feet up on the turned-down windshield. His pack is on the back seat, bulging with enough explosives to clear the streets of Tokyo in the rush hour.

  ‘It’s bleedin’ surprising’ admits Tiny, as he looks wide-eyed at the colourful leads, batteries and sticks of explosive Porta is shaking out of his pack. ‘What a nice little pocket-radio you’ve got there,’ he says, passing his hand lovingly over the electric detonator.

  ‘You’ve said it, my son. It’s that lovely you can hardly stand it. We’re going to tune it to Station SD – Sudden Death,’ and Porta laughs until he gives himself hiccups.

  Tiny hits the table a blow which sends one of its planks flying up to hit him under his chin, but he is so pleased at the thought of Wolf’s impending demise that he doesn’t even notice the violent blow.

  ‘That’s bleedin’ wonderful,’ he shouts, juggling carelessly with a stick of explosive. ‘These things ought to be able to give us a lovely big bang!’

  ‘Knock the devil off his throne,’ grins Porta, maliciously, ’and they’re going to send Wolf, his Chinese and his dogs off on the world’s longest day trip. When we see them go down over the horizon, we’ll have us a mik you’ve never seen the like of.’

  ‘Don’t make a balls of it!’ warns the Old Man, darkly.

  ‘It is worrying,’ says Heide, looking doubtfully at all the explosives.

  ‘Mad lot, you are,’ Gregor laughs heartily. ‘There’s enough there to free the entire Kingdom of the Hellenes from the unwanted presence of Germans in their country.’

  ‘If we’re going to fix Wolf right, and I intend to do just that,’ says Porta, decisively, ‘a dozen sticks is minimum. I know that bastard. I think he’s the Mafia’s agent in the German Army! When he was called as a witness at a court-martial in Biele-feldt, the defending officer said:

  ‘“Oberfeldwebel Wolf, if you had been born in Sicily you would have been one of the big three in the Mafia!”’

  ‘I would recommend you to ensure that the detonator is set for the proper wavelength,’ smiles Heide, thinly. ‘It would be annoying for you if the charges were to explode under yourselves!’

  ‘Holy Mary! Jesus forbid!’ mumbles Porta, shocked, and crosses himself.

  ‘It’s bleedin’ surprising as I ’ave said before,’ says Tiny, standing with the detonator in his hand and turning the dial. ‘It’s bleedin surprisin’ what we ’uman bein’s can invent. It’s only a matter of knoekin’ your ’ead against the wall long enou
gh. A little tiny box like this an’, just think, it can blow the life out of a real wicked bleeder!’

  ‘Hell’s bells, man!’ shouts Porta, terrified, snatching the detonator from him. ‘You can send us all to hell turning that thing. What the devil was it turned to, now? Keep away from technical things you don’t understand. This is only for people like me who’ve been to the powder-monkey school at Bamberg.’

  ‘Now we’re in trouble with that damned detonator,’ sighs Gregor resignedly. ‘Get all that shit outside in the fields quick before it goes up.’

  ‘Nothing’ll ’appen to me,’ says Tiny, making an elegant gesture with his hand. ‘I’ve ’ad me fortune told an’ I’m goin’ to die a quiet an’ lovely death.’

  ‘What the devil shall I turn it to?’ asks Porta, uncertainly, twisting the dial.

  ‘Put ’er on thirteen,’ suggests Tiny, optimistically. ‘Thirteen’s my lucky number!’

  Barcelona backs thirteen up and the dial is turned to that number.

  They pack everything in two long cigar boxes, and put the finishing touch to it with a blue silk ribbon. They tie it with a large bow on one side.

  ‘Here you are, then,’ says Porta, handing the parcel to Tiny. ‘Off you go, my lad, and deliver his present to Frankenstein’s grandson!’

  ‘What! screams Tiny, in horror. ‘Think I was born last week?’ He pushes the parcel away from him gingerly. ‘’Specially now when we don’t even know whether the bleedin’ little radio ’as been dialled right or not!’

  ‘You said thirteen was your lucky number!’ shouts Porta, staring at him blankly. ‘And you said the gypsies had promised you’d die quietly! What are you worrying about, then?’

  ‘You can’t believe everythin’ you ’ear, can you now?’ says Tiny cautiously. ‘That kind o’ thing’s for sick people.’

  We sit down and think about it. The two dangerous cigar boxes lie on the table before us.

  ‘I know!’ shouts Tiny, his face lighting up.

  ‘Last night I met an Italian copper they calls “Apeface”. ’E used to be a nice feller, I ’ear, but that was before the Army fucked the poor bleeder up an’ give ’im a bad reputation. ’E’s been sent ’ere to the Grecos as a punishment for torturing blokes in some prison up north o’ Naples. ’E boasts about it. Somethin’ about ’ow ’e used to smash their toes one at a time, or somethin’ like that. ‘Is name’s Mario Frodone an’ ’e’s ready to do business. They say ’e digs up the bodies after they’ve executed ’em, an’ sells ’em to a sausage factory but I don’t know if it’s right or not. Still an’ all, ’e looks like one o’ them as can look after number bleedin’ one all right!’