Wheels of Terror

by Sven Hassel

  I had much to tell the lads in the bunker out there. Much can be experienced during four days’ leave. A new world can transpire. An old world disappear.

  The last night she wanted my Iron Cross. She got it. It fell into a drawer among several other decorations and rank-badges from men who had visited her.

  She called herself Helene Strasser. She laughed as she told me. She showed me a yellow-star carefully wrapped in silk. She threw her head back, shook her hair and laughed.

  ‘That is my decoration.’

  She looked at me expecting a violent reaction. But I was indifferent. Once there was an SS man who tried to forbid Porta to sit on a bench with the notice: ‘Only for Jews’. The SS man died.

  ‘Don’t you understand? I’ve got the Jew’s star.’

  ‘Yes, but what of it?’

  ‘You’ll be sent to prison,’ she laughed, ‘because you’ve been in bed with me. Was I worth it?’

  ‘Yes, but how is it you are free? And living here?’

  ‘Connections, connections.’ She showed me a party membership card with her photograph.

  *

  The train rumbled across the steppe past forgotten villages. Sleepy Hungarian guards looked after its many unbelievably dirty trucks and ages-old passenger carriages.

  One of my friends, a colonel’s son, at a military college had to leave Germany because his wife’s great-grand-father was a Jew. They were divorced on paper. Further the discipline could not reach. We drove him and his wife to the Swiss border in a Mercedes staff-car, with a three-cornered flag on the mud-guard and SS number plates right up to the frontier. He went across with his wife whose ancestors had been Jews, and in a wood at Donaueschingen the SS plates were changed with WH plates.

  They arrested his mother and her father, for the sake of symmetry presumably. Her mother and his father they let go, but they never received any ration-cards. In 1941 his father was shot. They said it was suicide. There was a nice wreath from the army. Officers followed behind the colonel’s coffin. Nice speeches were made.

  In Nogilev I changed trains. On the platform I ran into the MT officer who stopped me and asked after my well-being. He offered me a cigarette and addressed me: ‘Herr Fahnenjunker.’

  My astonishment was great. I was almost frightened by this unexpected politeness. He was dressed in the uniform of the cavalry with finger-thick yellow cords, high glossy boots with huge silver-spurs which jingled like sleigh-bells.

  He regarded me benevolently through his monocle.

  ‘And where are you off to, my dear Herr Fahnenjunker.’

  I crashed my heels together and answered in the fully regulated manner:

  ‘Herr Rittmeister, Fahnenjunker Hassel humbly reports that he is proceeding to the regiment via Mogily and Brobrusk.’

  ‘Do you know when the train starts for Brobrusk, dear friend?’

  ‘No, Herr Rittmeister.’

  ‘I don’t know either. Let’s guess.’

  He stared up at the grey racing clouds as if he expected a timetable to drop down from heaven. He gave up.

  ‘Well, well, let’s see. How was it? You want to go to Brobrusk, my dear Fahnenjunker? Have you got the standard you bear with you?’

  My eyes rolled with sheer confusion. Was he making fun of me? Was he insane?

  I glanced round. There were only two people, two station-staff men far down the platform.

  He smiled wildly, took his monocle out and polished it.

  ‘Where’s your standard, dear friend. The regiment’s beloved standard?’

  He started quoting Rilke:

  ‘Meine gute mutter,

  Seid stolz: Ich trage die Fahne,

  Seid ohne Sorge: Ich trage die Fahne,

  Habt mich lieb: Ich trage die Fahne—’

  He put his hand on my shoulder:

  ‘Dear Rainer Maria Rilke. You are a hero, the pride of the cavalry. The Great King will reward you.’

  He walked up and down, spat at the sleepers and went on in his falsetto voice as he pointed to the rails:

  ‘What you see there is the railway. It’s so named because it consists of two parallel steel-rods. These are called rails in the handbook for railway employees. The bed you see under the rails is made of gravel, shingle and broken stones. By scientific tests it has been established that the best method is to put sleepers across with a distance of 0.7 metres between them. On these wonderful, precisely-cut sleepers the steel-rails are bedded and screwed, each single unit secured by bolts and buttjoints. The distance between the rails is, according to the text-book for the railways, termed gauge. The Russians have a special gauge because they’ve got no culture. But the National-Socialist German army-state is changing the whole Russian railway net to our cultured gauge as our liberation army marches into Russia to bring light into the darkness.’

  He bent towards me, blinked his eyes solemnly, adjusted his belt, and rocked comfortably on his heels.

  ‘On September 27th, 1825, the English had the unheard of cheek to open the first railway. According to accurate information obtained by our intelligence, the train consisted of thirty-four carriages weighing ninety tons. The distance was covered in sixty-five minutes.

  I dared to ask the distance.

  He tapped his teeth with a silver tooth-pick, sucking a little at a tooth. When his private dentistry was complete, he whispered confidentially:

  ‘Twelve and a half kilometres. But I take it for granted that Herr Luftmarschal Hermann Göring’s bombers now have annihilated this danger to our Holy German-Roman State.’ He took a few deep breaths and went on: ‘You can with the help of special explosives from the army’s arsenal at Bamberg break up any existing railway line. But according to the laws of nature it must be done only by German troops in time of war, and only then if our culture is threatened. Do you understand all this, Herr Fahnenjunker Rilke?’

  I nodded dumbly. ‘Now you know what a railway line is made of,’ was my only thought.

  ‘You are going to Brobrusk. To collect the standard, I presume.’

  Suddenly he became angry and swore at me for losing it at Brobrusk, but changed back almost immediately to the polite nobleman.

  ‘So you want to go to Brobrusk. Then you’ll have to get the times right. I presume you want to take advantage of our excellent National-Socialist trains. Let me see, you want to go to Brobrusk.’

  Again he became quite mad and shrieked with a breaking voice:

  ‘What the hell do you want there?’

  He looked at me oddly.

  ‘Ha, I thought so! You’re off to send the whole railway line into the air? Shut up, Herr Fahnenjunker, your job is to carry the standard, the old blood-soaked standard. Keep away from Brobrusk. Stay here with me.’

  He started whistling ‘Horst Wessel’, but it didn’t suit him, so he started humming something like this:

  ‘Muss i denn, muss i denn zum Städeke naus

  Und du, mein Schatz, bleibst hier?’

  He danced up and down, then suddenly stopped and neighed with delight: ‘Well, here is the black hussar. Fahnenjunker Rainer Maria Rilke without his standard, bloody swine. You’re off to the glasshouse, but we’ll wait till this lovely war is over and victory-drunk cavalry troops thunder through the Brandenburger Tor greeted by spontaneous ovations from our wonderful women.’

  After a short pause he added heartily and with conviction:

  ‘And our lousy people. Well now, off you go to Brobrusk, Fahnenjunker. The train leaves at 14.21 on platform 37. It’s train No. 156 but God help you if you don’t bring back the standard. A regiment without its standard is like a railway without trains.’

  I peeped nervously at the elegant officer who was either drunk or mad, or perhaps both.

  I clicked my heels together and shouted:

  ‘Herr Rittmeister, Fahnenjunker Hassel reports: The time is now 19.14 hours. I humbly ask confirmation that the train stops at platform 37?’

  He rocked on his heels, his boots creaked, he lit a
cigarette and blew the smoke in a cloud.

  ‘So that’s your question? You see I carry this cross. Don’t you believe me? Does it mean you’re insinuating that an officer from the horse-guards is full of lies?’

  ‘No, Herr Rittmeister.’

  ‘Shut up and listen, Fahnenjunker without standard.’ He spat with disgust. ‘You, you, you’re a bastard. It doesn’t concern me what time it is. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Rittmeister.’

  ‘Herr Fahnenjunker, all the watches are going to hell. Train No. 156, platform 37 leaves for Brobrusk at 14.21 hours. Enough! And by the Holy Moses it’ll go at 14.21 hours. But if it’ll be to-day or in a year, ah – that’s where the corpse is buried! But we must have discipline. Don’t touch the military regulations.’

  He danced up the platform while he counted:

  ‘One, two, three, four, five, six.’

  Then he stopped, looked at the many tracks and shouted:

  ‘Alles einsteigen. Zug fahrt ab! Berlin – Warsaw – Brest-Litovsk – Mogilev – Hell!’ He clicked his tongue and chuckled. ‘There, I cheated his excellency the field-marshal. That was the train for Paradise. Well, well, Herr Fahnenjunker, as you see you’ve got to be smart here with these Imperial Russian railways. Only last week I managed to send another general to Paradise: now I suppose he’s with St Peter playing with his pigeons. When you get to Brobrusk remember me to Her Majesty the Empress Catherine. She sells Stalinchocolate in the market at Brobrusk. But don’t tell her, she doesn’t know herself.’

  Curiously enough the train did stop at platform 37, an ammunition train going to Brobrusk.

  Without further difficulties I reached my destination: the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment.

  Again I stood in a Russian hut. A small, dirty stinking room. What a change from Helene’s light, friendly flat with its fragrance.

  Tired out I threw myself on the musty straw on the clay-floor and fell into a deep sleep.

  Next morning the company returned from its job of building positions. Tiny greeted me with delight and shouted:

  ‘Brought any fancy pants for me? I’m dying for a pair. Light-blue pants would make me rear like a horse!’

  The Old Un had got the parcel from his wife. He retired to a corner, lost to the world.

  For hours I talked about experiences. Not a button, not a strap was overlooked.

  ‘Did she have fringed pants?’ Porta wanted to know.

  ‘What, fringed?’

  ‘Yes, I mean these thingamebobs beautiful girls edge their pants with.’ His hands described what he meant.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I lit up. ‘She had lace.’

  ‘Do you call it lace?’ Porta thumbed through his pictures and showed me an especially daring example. Grinning slyly, he asked:

  ‘Did you do it like that?’

  ‘No you dirty swine, I didn’t go to a brothel. I visited a real girl, a Jewish girl.’

  ‘A what?’ They all shouted with one voice.

  Even The Old Un woke from his dream of wife and children.

  ‘Does frippet like that still exist?’

  They got the story of Helene.

  In the middle of the night Porta and Tiny woke me up.

  ‘Tell us,’ whispered Porta. ‘That girl, did she have a bright red girdle, and real thigh-long stockings? With only a little bit bare?’

  ‘Yes, bright red, and very long stockings,’ was my sleepy reply.

  ‘Hell! A bright red girdle,’ groaned Porta.

  ‘And very long stockings,’ went on Tiny.

  They fell heavily back in the straw.

  ‘Didn’t she have even one tiny louse?’ Porta asked from the darkness.

  ‘No lice, you must be mad.’ I answered with dignity.

  ‘And didn’t she smell even a little bit of dirt?’ asked Stege from his corner by the stove.

  ‘Smell …’

  A sigh. Snoring.

  18

  A clerk sat in the office. A slip of paper was on his desk. His brain was nearly paralysed by the regulations. He let the case take its course. A man was hanged. A girl lost her father. The war went on.

  The Partisan

  It was the day after the head-hunters took away a Russian farmer. He had been sitting in the cells outside the orderly-room. Really he was meant to be left to sit there only until he became sober, but the orderly-room sergeant, Heide, party-member and home-guard, saw his great chance. The farmer had fallen into his hands like a ripe plum. He reported at once to his superiors and the papers were signed with the CO’s rubber-stamp. So the avalanche broke loose. Nothing could save the farmer. Soon the train would go off to a safe spot in the rear, carrying Sergeant Heide decorated with an Iron Cross of the Ist class.

  Two bottles of vodka had been emptied. The farmer and a sergeant from No. 2 Company had come to blows. The sergeant was locked up in No. 2 Company’s lines and appeared when he was sober. Everything happened according to regulations. A report on a slip of paper became the fuse to set off a chain-explosion of events.

  At Jitomir they were very keen on courts-martial and special charges. They loved them dearly. And this case was blown up as always happens in the army.

  The prison commandant, Major-General Hase, was an old man. Over seventy. He always kept a lock of hair from the executed neatly arranged in a box lined with velvet. He collected executed prisoners as others collect butterflies. What could the mighty gentlemen at Jitomir do if they did not execute people? Once the war was over the general would again become the nice headmaster in a small town where for the sake of the bourgeoisie he would have to give up his hobby of collecting locks of hair.

  The farmer was a worn, poor man, who had had one over the eight of strong vodka. On paper he became a nasty partisan who wanted to harm the Third Reich.

  The head-hunters fetched the farmer Vladimir Ivanovitch Vjatschslav away. They flung him into the truck, grinning as they did so, and waved good-bye to us as they trundled off to Jitomir.

  One of the head-hunters hit the farmer on the head with his rifle-butt. He was only a Russian farmer, the lowest of the low in the eyes of a Prussian head-hunter. He would have been forgotten quickly enough if it had not been for the girl in the green head-scarf.

  One becomes accustomed to everything, even the hanging of many ‘partisans’. After their death they became Soviet heroes. Had they survived they would have become Soviet-strafnjik in the Ukhta-Petjora camp because they had not been hanged as ‘partisans’, but had tilled the earth while Hitler’s soldiers stayed in their village.

  The girl with the green scarf came into the canteen which was a converted hut. It was the quartermaster’s idea to have a canteen. He was a business man. One of the ‘sixty per cent profiteers’!

  She hesitated before she approached the table where Porta and Tiny sat with the rest of us.

  ‘Where’s my father? He’s been here for three days. Anastasia and I have no food.’

  ‘Who is your father, you little thick-head?’ The Old Un asked quite affectionately; and Porta clicked his tongue lecherously.

  The girl responded with another click. We all roared with laughter.

  ‘My father is the farmer Vladimir Ivanovitch Vjatschslav who lives in the yellow cottage by the river.’

  For a moment there was silence.

  The Old Un scratched his neck and looked desperately around for help, but we all edged away from him. What were we to say? A trial in Jitomir was a nasty affair. They liked to see the rope dangle from the rafters, and it was better if a man was hanged by the rope.

  ‘Little girl, the army police took him away. Something silly happened. A clerk wrote a few words too many on a piece of paper.’

  ‘Where did they take Father?’

  The Old Un pushed his hand through his hair. Porta cleaned his ears with the stick from the roll-mops.

  ‘Well, I don’t really know. They drove westwards to the main road.’

  The girl, who was barely fourteen years old, stared
round with frightened eyes which took in the bearded dirty faces with drops of vodka in the corners of their mouths and bits of machorka-cigarettes hanging in their beards. They were foreign soldiers in strange uniforms who arrested poor farmers, hanged them, or sent them far away to the west from where nobody ever returned.

  ‘Are you alone by the river?’ Stege asked, for the sake of saying something.

  ‘No, Anastasia is there, she’s ill.’

  ‘Who’s Anastasia?’

  ‘She’s my sister. She only three years old.’

  The soldiers coughed and blew their noses. Tiny spat.

  ‘To hell with the whole world and first of all the head-hunters!’

  ‘Who does the cooking?’ The Old Un asked.

  The girl looked at us. ‘I do, who else?’

  ‘No, that’s right. But you’ve got no food. Where’s your mother?’

  ‘She was taken away by the Russian NKVD when they fetched grandfather a long time ago. Long before they started shooting.’

  Tiny had crossed to the quartermaster. After a short but violent argument he returned with a loaf and a bag of salt.

  ‘Here, take it from Tiny.’ He kicked irritably at the table-leg. ‘Take it before I throw it away.’

  The girl nodded and put it away in a pocket under her skirt.

  ‘Sit down here, sister,’ Porta commanded.

  The soldiers shuffled together to make room.

  She sat down.

  Porta spooned Tiny’s, Stege’s and his own food together in an empty dixie-lid and pushed it across to the girl.

  ‘Eat it. You must be hungry.’

  ‘Perhaps Father’s come home. I think I’ll run home.’

  She looked questioningly at us.

  Nobody returned her glance. We smoked silently, filled our pipes or drank long draughts from the vodka bottle.

  The Old Un pulled at his nose.

  ‘No, sit down and eat. Your father hasn’t come home.’ After a short pause he added, subdued: ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  Carefully, a little shy, she sat on the edge of the rough seat. She pushed the green scarf back and greedily filled her mouth full, chewed, swallowed, drank, shovelling more in and swallowed again. Ignoring the spoon The Old Un offered she used her fingers.