Wheels of Terror

by Sven Hassel

  ‘Who’s Ewald?’ said The Old Un, astonished.

  ‘You ask like the bloody fool you are, but that’s why you’re a sergeant. Ewald is our General, Field-Marshal Herr Kleist, you peasant. Now perhaps you’ll not interrupt. As you have been training for some time, you know we always leave behind a small force when we evacuate our positions. That is so that Ivan will not discover at once that we have run away. When this lot starts feeling lonely after some hours they blow everything sky high before they run off. That’s the sort of thing we did in the Caucasus before we said good-bye to our colleagues on the other side. Ewald knew very well I was a devil of a fine soldier. ‘Listen, my own good Herr Obergefreiter Porta,’ he said in confidence. ‘You must have heard that Ivan has rapped us over the knuckles so severely lately that I can’t spare many of my men when I go with Mister Hitler’s vehicles. But you are worth half a foot-rag regiment and are indestructible, so I ask you, dear Joseph, if you’ll give me a hand with evacuating the army corps’ positions.’

  ‘I saluted so that sparks flew round our ears and roared: “Yes, Herr General Field-Marshal. I’ll do that. I’m not afraid of anything”.’

  ‘Tell me, were you at headquarters that time?’ said Stege as he winked at us.

  ‘My God, I was,’ answered Porta, angry at the interruption. ‘You doll, maybe you imagine I ran round like an ordinary foot-rag candidate down there on the Ralmuk-Steppe? No, I served right among the dirty great generals and many a time I gave Ewald some smashing tips. He didn’t pay any attention to his own staff officers. His whole Intelligence mob was nothing compared with me, Corporal by the grace of God, Joseph Porta.’

  ‘It’s very funny, you never became a general,’ said The Old Un. ‘I think General Field-Marshal Kleist must have been ungrateful considering what you did for him.’

  Porta shook his head.

  ‘You ask too many stupid questions. Think, you idiot, you know very well that the officer’s uniform doesn’t become me, and I can’t for the life of me stand it. That red colour the generals carry on their collars just doesn’t suit my complexion. But shut up till I’ve finished. Then we’ll see about answering all your daft questions.

  ‘I was left in the army corps’ positions to have a little fun with Ivan. I thought about being caught. It wouldn’t have done my health any good if they’d found out they had to deal with me. It might be a kind of insult to Stalin himself. My name being Joseph didn’t mean he’d be any happier about it. By God, I thought, I must save my skin. I was very glad when I found a nice dead padre in a trench. I had heard that Ivan accepted all this nonsense about church and priests as in the Tsar’s time. So I reckoned it would be a nice change to wear a uniform like that, especially should the devils across the line get hold of me. They wouldn’t dare make too much fun with a padre. Most Ivans have a devilish respect for holy things. No sooner thought than done. I popped on the uniform and gave the padre mine, so he wouldn’t offend anybody’s modesty. But he looked indifferent and all my lice were sadly disappointed with his sour blood. When I gazed in the mirror I was very pleased with the handsome spectacle I saw. I looked so very good and godly with all that purple on the collar. The fine holy cross I had round my neck was just like a new decoration invented by fat Hermann. Yes, my dear children, you wouldn’t have believed your eyes had you seen me as God’s gospeller.’

  ‘We don’t doubt that,’ said The Old Un quietly.

  ‘To-day I owe the good God a great deal,’ went on Porta. ‘Because no doubt from him I got the holy inspiration to put on the dead padre’s uniform.

  ‘Shortly afterwards Ivan was on top of me and before I could wink an eyelid I was dragged in front of their commander, a wild devil of a colonel with shoulder tabs as broad as a dining-table for a big family. He rolled his eyes like a cannibal and opened his wet gob in a roar: “By Satan in hot hell, if it isn’t a padre-devil you’ve brought me, my lads! By all the little pink devils, how dirt-holy you are across there. Just as we have hanged our own pope for rape and are racking our brains how to get a new one, another one bloody well drops into our arms. Padre, will you be our pope or will you rather hang?”

  ‘I put on my most holy face and answered unctuously:

  ‘“Sir, I’ll be your pope!”

  ‘At the same time I held the crucifix over his head and mumbled in the regulation fashion something like: “Cum spritu tuo, my little sucking-pig. I hope the smart boys at home are enjoying your wives, while you codfish are fighting for Uncle Joe.” You should have seen his pious expression under my blessing. I changed the dead Nazi-padre’s rags with his hanged Russian colleague’s and looked mighty handsome. I got on famously with the whole mob; you see, lads, the most important thing for a padre is to drink well.’

  Porta stopped for a moment and had a good swig of the new bottle we brought out to replace the empty petrol bottle. This one carried a ‘rifle oil’ label. He belched a few times and went on:

  ‘Courageously steal, eat like a horse, love all pretty girls in the congregation and last but not least: play cards and cheat well according to rule. I was well up in all these essentials that make a good padre. You know that from experience.’

  He patted the pocket where he kept the money he had won at pontoon and grinned engagingly.

  ‘I got many friends, and was regarded as a particularly fine padre. In the evening I played cards with the colonel and the three majors and we all cheated so openly, even a babe-in-arms would have blushed. I remember one time particularly that makes me white with anger, and you know I’m not delicate. For a whole day we played gin-rummy without a single one of us managing to get an ace of spades home. We sweated like pigs as the pot for the ace of spades grew. It had grown into several thousand roubles; and then, just imagine, my lads, we discovered that the colonel, the swine, had been holding the ace of spades all the time. He now thought the pot big enough and was about to take the trick home. A terrible argument blew up, and if the creature hadn’t called the guard we would have cut his liver out. But you’ll admit it was a mean trick to cheat his subordinates, not to speak of me, a clergyman. And what do you think? The swine put us all in the nick. But after a quarter of an hour he joined us with the cards and some bottles of vodka. We forgave him and went on cheating each other, as is the habit when nice people enjoy themselves in the quiet of evening, when God’s small stars wink and the moon shines like a drunk pig.

  ‘Then one day the divisional general paid us a visit to inspect the regiment. I had to put on a pretty little church parade. I got hold of a beautiful field-altar with a whole lot of fine saints on the outside, and a fine selection of French pictures on the inside. I, too, had to have something nice to look at during our service. As it was impossible to get hold of any holy wine for mass I laid my hands on a barrel of vodka and blessed it. We diced half a loaf so we could use that as altar bread. You’ll see that we had the right idea about what was appropriate at a church feast.

  ‘As a drunken slob of a captain came to the altar and got a drink from the holy wine, the swine bawled blasphemously: “Joseph, this is bloody strong altar wine you’re dishing out!” and asked for another peg, so it won’t surprise you I gave him one on the kisser and said: “Pjotr, you can go to hell!”

  ‘After I had been singing and preaching prettily for the whole gang, it was time to bless them so I raised the crucifix and cried: “Go down on your knees before God!” But the heathen idiots just stood and stared like cows at a red-painted gate.

  ‘Not one bent their knees. They seemed to think they were at the cinema so I took a deep breath and roared like our old Sergeant-Major Kraus in the depot used to on Monday morning parade when he discovered we had dirty boots: “To your knees, you damned donkey-stallions or I’ll skin you alive, you drooling foot-rag acrobats!” The men knelt, but the officers and NCOs remained standing. I shouted even louder. My larynx worked overtime and gave off queer noises, I pressed it so hard. “To your knees and pray, you rotten Black Sea peasants, or I’ll ca
strate the lot of you, and cut you up and make you eat yourselves, you dumb bog-animals!”

  ‘The NCOs went down on their knees, but the officers still standing, played with their riding whips against their long boots. They stood there, by God, smoking as if each of the brutes was sending up smoke from a sacrificial fire.

  ‘Well, I thought, it must be possible to get these officers to kneel. I breathed extra deeply and put all my strength in the roar I bellowed from the pulpit so that it echoed throughout Caucasia: “On your knees or I’ll bash your skulls in with this crucifix and the splinters will reach your stomachs and poison your souls. I’ll see to it that you’ll land in the worst of Hell’s torturechambers. As true as I am pope, you will be given the Evil One’s most devilish jankers, and you’ll stay for a thousand years!”

  ‘At the same time I swung the chalice and the officers fell on their knees. Now the whole 630th Soviet Guard Gunner-Regiment were on their knees, their heads piously down in front of me, and their hands neatly folded around the top of the rifles. I guzzled a large swig of the holy vodka, and blessed them in the regulation manner, as laid down in the army Service Code on Blessing of Large Troop-Gatherings. Later, the divisional commander thanked me for the beautiful and gripping service, the best one he’d ever attended, he said.’

  ‘I’d have given a good deal to have been there,’ laughed The Old Un.

  Porta got out his flute, took a large swig of pistol-oil and said:

  ‘As we have now finished with the soulful moments, let’s have a song. What about “It’s lovely to be a pimp”?’

  Rhythmically the vile song echoed round the armoury.

  ‘You certainly can spin a yarn, you red-haired fake,’ said The Old Un shaking with laughter. ‘How do you think of it all?’

  ‘Of all things,’ bellowed Porta, ‘the idiot asks how I think of it. My good sir, I don’t make it up. I have a good memory, that’s all. I remember exactly everything that has happened to me and see it’s correctly re-told. You wouldn’t say, would you, that I, Joseph Porta, by God’s grace Corporal in the Nazi army, am a romancer? If you do, I’ll personally skin off your sergeant’s cords, thread them through you and clean you out like a rifle. Fall out, you unbeliever!’

  We sat a while, chatted quietly and drank deeply.

  ‘Just think, when the war is over,’ said Stege a little later. ‘I’ll go out into a field of clover, lie down and talk to the birds. Oh boys, I look forward to that!’

  For a moment there was silence, which Porta interrupted, grabbing a machine-pistol from the rack and swinging it in an arc.

  ‘I have a few bills yet to settle with this little equalizer! There’s at least a couple of dozen SS boys I’ll make horizontal. And I’ve my eyes on Mister Himmler in particular. Believe me, or believe me not, that four-eyed bastard is going to get my combat knife so far in that he’ll get piles in his throat!’

  ‘Talk, talk,’ interrupted The Old Un. ‘And always of revenge and revolution. It wouldn’t help us. It would only bring on a counter-revolution. No, my lads, it’s better to forget the rotten beasts who’ve got us into this mess. Are they anything but lice, foul lice without souls? There’s not a bit of difference between Ivan’s red ones and our brown ones.’

  I said:

  ‘You were pleased enough when we shot Captain Meyer. Or would you rather forget him?’

  ‘That was in self-defence,’ said The Old Un. ‘It won’t apply to the others when Germany has lost. They’ll all sit terror-stricken and listen for our steps. Let Germany’s enemies deal with them if they can be bothered and are stupid enough. And I don’t mean we should help them. Shut them out from our society, I say. Make it impossible for them to get work.’

  ‘What if Germany doesn’t lose the war,’ I asked, ‘what then? You talk as if it would be lost to-morrow and we’d go home on Wednesday.’

  They all stared at me as if I was something peculiar from another planet.

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’ gasped The Old Un and Stege in one voice. ‘Not lose the war? Are you daft? Have you got a bullet in the brain?’

  Porta examined my head as if he was a monkey chasing lice on its young.

  Irritated, I wrenched myself free.

  ‘I mean what I say. Haven’t you heard about the V-weapons? Who knows, maybe there’s something worse in Adolf’s pocket. God help us and Germany’s enemies if Hitler’s gang of chemists and technicians invent something devilish enough to end the war in a few hours.’

  ‘If you mean gas,’ said Bauer mockingly, ‘we’ve had that all the time, but Adolf and his generals daren’t use it. They all know they’ll get a double helping back. No, Sven, you’re full of complexes.’

  ‘Complexes,’ grinned Porta. ‘They won’t find much room in his bonce, he’s such an idiot.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ I cut in, ‘can’t you be serious for a minute?’

  ‘Serious,’ answered Porta. ‘No, my flower, I wouldn’t dream of it. You see, when I get one in the tummy from the other side, I shall march gladly to hell with all the bands playing, while you cry for Mummy. That won’t happen to me, Joseph Porta, Nazi Corporal by God’s grace.’

  ‘Do you really believe,’ asked The Old Un distrustfully, ‘That Hitler has any chance of winning his war? Or all this bloody nonsense about V-weapons?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I answered irritably. ‘The nearer we get to the abyss, the more desperately they’ll search for something to destroy their enemies. I’ll tell you something which will make you think differently of this damned war. It’s Hitler’s war and of the greater part of the German people. If they don’t win, they think everything will be lost because they haven’t any imagination. They can never see beyond the last letter in the rules and regulations. Most of them are still in the grip of the military claw. Bloody few have got away! Last time I was in hospital I met a girl who took me home. I was asked to a party for her two brothers. They’d just got their pips. Speeches were made about these two heroes. Great importance was laid on the honour of serving as officers in the German Army; also on the proud fate that let them fight the barbarians who had attacked Germany, the old Holy Roman-German State. You should have heard their father blowing off: “I’m proud my two sons will carry the German National Socialist eagle on their chests!” The vicar who was invited to the party convinced everybody that these two Iron Cross apprentices were now God’s tools, since they had got their pips.

  ‘You don’t imagine people like that ever dream about Hitler losing the war. They help him all they can. Should he lose, there’ll be no more eagles and swastikas to sew on their child-heroes’ chests. So they’ve got to win. Not one of them imagines we could start on a better foundation than the Nazi one. Not that I care a tinker’s cuss, because I’m sure not one of us will survive to the happy end of this damned war, whether Hitler wins or loses. There are only fifteen left of us since we started three years ago, so why, for heaven’s sake, should we get away with it? There’s no end in sight yet.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right, Sven,’ said The Old Un quietly. ‘We talk about plans for when the war is over. It would be better if we all accepted our fate. We were created cannon-fodder to fight for a cause that isn’t our own. We don’t even protest when we are ordered to commit criminal acts. We trot nicely in front of the carriage we’re harnessed to, Hitler’s carriage, like a lot of donkeys with a carrot dangling in front. We don’t use our heads. We fight only because we’re too cowardly to break away.’

  ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ said Stege with a deep sigh.

  ‘Amen,’ said Porta and belched.

  ‘What about those trees at Tuapse?’ asked Bauer curiously.

  The Old Un took a long time to answer. Carefully he scraped out his old pipe with his bayonet and filled it calmly and thoughtfully from Porta’s abundant tobacco-purse.

  ‘You want to hear about the trees at Tuapse? We belonged then to Von Kleist’s army, and had travelled for weeks in the Caucasus. We had come fro
m Rostov and fought along the Black Sea coast. We were to get into Persia or Syria, or whatever they’re called, but it proved a lie. Mr. Timoshenko, Stalin’s sabre-swallower, saw to that. Our jäger troops had climbed the 17,000 feet high Elbruz mountains to plant the standard and enjoy the view, but Father Stalin’s mountain-boys soon got it down again.

  ‘As our whole circus reached Tuapse there was a lovely surprise in store for us. Ivan had covered the only road in existence with a sea of one and a half meter-thick mahogany and acacia trees. We were surrounded by bog and jungle. They had been cutting and sawing the whole lot down for weeks, and when we came round the corner they started, God help us, to burn them down too. Our pioneers from the 94th and 74th fought like tigers to clear the road. The biggest bulldozers were helpless. We had little petrol but we tried to burn a clearing, and very nearly roasted ourselves like Christmas turkeys. Ivan sat in the thick jungle and picked us off. Panic broke out. We started to run. Soon it was an avalanche. But, lucky for us, Ivan had cut so many trees they stopped him from chasing us. When the army corps after a few days got under control we dragged ourselves along to the Caspian. We were after oil. Do you remember how Goebbels bragged about all that oil we had in our tanks? At that time we were on the Georgian dirt road and hundreds of miles were between us and the nearest oil wells.’

  ‘Oh, God, yes,’ said Pluto, ‘the Georgian “military road”! Nobody could forget it. A gutter of mud. All our carts stuck.’

  Stege started to laugh.

  ‘Do you remember how our “623” slid on its tracks, broke telephone posts like matchsticks and knocked a couple of our motor-cycles with sidecars in the mud so they were squashed flat like pancakes? The damned military road! The whole circus stuck like a bung in a barrel.’

  Darkness fell over the armoury. We could hear the recruits singing as they returned from their latest field-exercise.