Wheels of Terror

by Sven Hassel

Porta only chuckled.

  Silently the Very-lights travelled up over the frontline. Machine-gun fire rattled from both sides. In the sky we heard bombers growling westwards. Tracer-ammunition rose at them and faded again.

  Porta lifted his hand. Noiselessly we stopped and stood like tree-trunks among the trees. Just in front stretched a Russian trench. We could clearly see the dug-outs. A figure passed and disappeared up a traverse.

  Porta waved us forward. A quiet whisper and we raced over the parapet, across the trench, over some earth-mounds, fell, rose, fell again, slipped on the greasy soil and rolled down a slope. A machine-gun started to stutter. Bullets whined. Automatic weapons emptied their magazines at us. A couple of mortars barked hollowly. The bomb-splinters hissed past us like angry wasps. We lay flat at the bottom of a shell-hole.

  A German machine-gun started to send long bursts over the hole. One of the Russian women began shrieking and before we could stop her she was over the edge. She swayed backwards and folded up with a dying inarticulate scream. The whole of her abdomen was perforated with machine-gun bullets.

  The Old Un swore.

  ‘Now they’ll know something’s going on. I wouldn’t wonder if they started bombarding us with heavy guns.’

  He had hardly finished when the air shook with mortar-bombs and 7.5-cm. shells. Star-shells burst, and then the Russians started.

  One of the prisoners got his face ripped off by a shell-splinter. Three others were killed trying to scramble out of the hole.

  At daybreak the firing ceased, but to get away we had to wait for darkness to fall.

  Tiny stared at the dead. A wounded man whimpered loudly. Tiny pointed to the man’s torn face.

  ‘What a lot of muck one’s got in the face when it’s opened up. What’s that grey stuff?’

  Stege bent forward.

  ‘Brains, and that other stuff’s crushed bones. Look, that eye hangs down to what used to be his mouth. How large the teeth look when all the jaw-bone’s gone. Blimey, what a sight.’ He turned to Tiny. ‘What the hell are you staring at it for, you nosy bastard.’

  ‘Shut up, Stege,’ interrupted Porta. ‘Leave Tiny alone. You’re always getting at him.’

  Tiny was quite moved.

  ‘That’s true. The whole lot of you are always ill-treating Tiny. I never bother anyone.’

  The Little Legionnaire patted his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t cry, Tiny, you’re making me weep too. We’ll be nice to you and chase away the bogey-man.’

  A sergeant-major among the freed German prisoners burst out irritatedly:

  ‘Is it necessary to make fun of everything? You’re not all there, you gangsters.’

  Porta half rose.

  ‘Tone down a little. You’re our guest. If you don’t like it, push off. Two steps up and straight ahead. If we hadn’t come you’d have been on your way to Kolymna, and I don’t mind betting you’d have been buried at Dalstroj within two years.’

  ‘What the hell are you thinking of?’ stormed the sergeant-major. ‘Since when does a corporal speak to a sergeant-major this way?’

  Porta shook his head wonderingly.

  ‘God Almighty, man, have you lost your reason? Do you still believe it’s the old days when you opened your gobs and us poor bastards licked your boots?’

  ‘I’ll talk to you when we get back,’ snapped the sergeant.

  ‘By Christ,’ said Bauer, ‘It sounds like a threat. Court-martial, jail, twelve men on special detail. A courageous fellow, this infantry-boy. Great hero. What’s his name?’

  ‘I’ll talk to you when we get back,’ snapped the sergeant-major.

  Pluto bent towards him and examined his shoulder-tabs.

  ‘Judging from your white cords you’re an infantry-man all right.’

  ‘Silence!’ raged the sergeant-major. ‘I’ll see to you yet.’

  ‘We’ll see to everything ourselves meantime. I’m giving the orders here,’ The Old Un said quietly.

  The sergeant-major turned and stared at The Old Un. He was lying at the bottom of the hole with his eyes shut.

  ‘Forty yards to Ivan, seventy to our blokes and the ground between not too much chewed up. A very courageous fellow, this infantry-boy,’ sneered Bauer.

  A couple of hours after darkness the Little Legionnaire crawled noiselessly out and stomached his way to the German lines to warn the gunners not to fire at us.

  Three hours passed before the expected signal of two Very-lights came.

  One by one we snaked across the ground until we jumped into our own trenches.

  Porta was the last one to arrive. The sergeant-major was missing. Nobody knew what had happened to him.

  20

  For dinner we had our most fantastic wishes granted. We became insane with grandeur. Porta even ordered Stege to polish his boots.

  Half-smoked cigars were grandly thrown away. Tiny insisted he always did that.

  The Old Un ordered a napkin with his coffee. We were all very grand. Pluto was the grandest of all – but not for long.

  What do you want to eat?

  The position was sited in a wood. Lovely and quiet. A couple of shells exploded every five minutes but nicely distant. The sun shone spring-like and warmed us to the marrow.

  Pluto was on the parapet sitting on a tree-trunk darning his socks. He had thrown off his shirt and tunic. From time to time he shouted down to us in order to play his part in our chatter.

  Our rations were brought out to us, double portions of everything – even pipe-tobacco and a packet of ten Juno’s for each.

  Porta held his in the air and shouted happily:

  ‘Berliner raucht Juno! I can almost smell Weddingen and good old Friedrichstrasse with the 10-mark whores.’

  ‘Ah yes, tarts,’ sighed Tiny. ‘I wonder if we’ll get a little heavy action again soon?’

  ‘That would be nasty,’ said Pluto. ‘Fancy buying it before you’d had your go at the whore-shop!’

  Tiny stared at his palm.

  ‘Boy, you make me frightened. Let me see your life-line.’

  Pluto held out his hand.

  ‘Yours is shorter than mine. That’s nice. As long as you’re allowed to run about clowning, I’ll know I’ve got time left. Funny, those lines in your paw.’

  The quartermaster, breathing hard, asked importantly what we wished to have for dinner next day.

  ‘You mean we can have whatever we want?’ Porta asked suspiciously.

  ‘Yes, just order anything and you’ll get it. I’m easy. What you want you’ll have.’

  ‘A duck roasted with chicory, prunes, claret and the whole Turkish orchestra,’ ordered Porta and let off a thundering fart. ‘Sniff it in, you bastards! The whole alphabet of vitamins dance in the air!’

  The quartermaster wrote it down conscientiously as he repeated the order to himself.

  We gaped. Stege stuck out his neck.

  ‘Pork-brawn with mustard for me.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the quartermaster calmly.

  ‘Holy Saints! Are you mad?’ said The Old Un. ‘Or have you swiped a whole lord’s manor?’

  The quartermaster looked hurt.

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. What do you want to stuff yourself with to-morrow?’

  ‘Anything I like?’ The Old Un asked narrowly.

  ‘What do you want for dinner to-morrow?’

  ‘Whole roasted sucking-pig with sweet potatoes.’ The Old Un announced triumphantly, dead certain that would rock the quartermaster.

  He wrote, completely indifferent: ‘Whole roast sucking-pig with sweet potatoes.’

  ‘Are you willing to swear I’ll get it?’ shouted The Old Un.

  ‘It’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  The Old Un managed to nod weakly. His face bore an imbecile expression.

  ‘Well then, you’ll get it.’

  Pluto fell from his high perch. Lying on the ground he stared at the quartermaster.

  ‘Partridge, two, with everyth
ing a king could wish for.’

  ‘Certainly,’ was the quartermaster’s answer as he wrote in his book.

  ‘Heavens,’ whispered Tiny. ‘Nobody’s asked me yet. What’s going on? Are you blokes going to be shot to-morrow?’

  ‘Shut up and sing out your order for dinner to-morrow,’ the quartermaster interrupted impatiently.

  ‘Pig’s liver with creamed potatoes and warm milk with egg-dumplings. That’s supposed to be very nice, and I’ll have a go. Perhaps it’s my last chance.’

  ‘Poussin with haricots verts and pommes frites for me,’ ordered the Little Legionnaire.

  The quartermaster stared uncomprehendingly at him.

  ‘That’s a dish I bloody well don’t know. Talk German, scum.’

  The Little Legionnaire handed him a note with his wishes written down.

  ‘Look it up in the dictionary, but God help you if you get it wrong.’

  ‘Oxtail-soup and ten leeks with spaghetti. Fifteen fried eggs with onion, fried on both sides,’ beamed Bauer.

  ‘All right,’ the quartermaster answered. ‘I’ll see that even the onions are fried both sides, you stupid swine.’

  When we had all given our orders the quartermaster shut his book and placed it under his cap.

  ‘You’ll get your wishes granted, you stupid animals. It’s von Barring’s orders that you’ll all have what you want. The battalion have come across some extra rations. He wants to make a splash.’

  ‘What are you going to have yourself?’ Porta asked.

  ‘Pig’s trotters with sauerkraut, chopped vegetables, small birds with cloves – I think, roast pigeon and roast chicken. If I can eat any more I’ll have a filled pudding.’

  We stared speechless at him as he moved off.

  Pluto crawled back to his tree-trunk and went on darning his socks.

  The Old Un turned to Peters who as usual was by himself smoking his pipe.

  ‘What have you been doing to land up in the 27th Regiment?’

  Peters looked at The Old Un in silence, knocked his pipe out and filled it with calm thoughtful movements.

  ‘You want to know why I’m here?’ He scanned the expectant faces. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. In 1933 my wife’s family were prominent. My father-in-law became an Ortsgruppenleiter. I was not wanted as a son-in-law. They asked me to pack up. They had witnesses to prove I was a criminal. Unfortunately, I was so naïve I said no. The next move was underlined with a mild threat, and, ass that I was, I kept saying no and told them to go to hell. They kept quiet for a couple of years. Then the last warning came. It happened one morning, and in the evening the police arrived. I got eight weeks in the cells. Then they put me in front of a small devil of a magistrate. Very correct, perfectly correct. Tie, handkerchief, socks and shoes all carefully blended. His face was correctness itself. So well shaven, and such a neat haircut. Every word I said was carefully taken down in shorthand by a woman who sat grinning at me.

  ‘When they took me to the cellar I still had not heard why I was suspected. The SS man who took me down entertained his mate with what they were going to do with me:

  ‘“He’s off to the large mincing-machine in Moabitt. Hey presto, head off!” Instead of keeping my big mouth shut I protested that I was innocent.

  ‘They hit me with rubber-truncheons and shouted: “Yes, you’re innocent of the Reichstag fire!”

  ‘They fetched me out three or four times nightly and after the usual introductory kicks and ear-cuffings I had to jump up and down the corridors along with a few others. We had to howl like wolves or caw like crows according to the whim of our warders.

  ‘One old man of seventy they forced to do hand-stands. Every time he was half-way up they hit him in the groin.’

  ‘How long could he take that?’ asked Stege.

  ‘Not very long,’ answered Peters. ‘Every hit was short and sharp, precisely in the same spot. Three hits, and the old man fainted. But you can revive a person five or six times with sulphuric acid and other refined methods. At two o’clock in the morning I was called for re-examination in court. First they called my wife as a witness. She pointed to me and cried: “Take that scoundrel away, that child-ravisher!” She spat at me. Two policemen had to hold her down to stop her from tearing my eyes out. I was speechless, as you can imagine.

  ‘My father-in-law looked me straight in the eyes and said: “How could you violate your own daughter! We pray for your soul!” The rest of the witnesses were the usual bunch, right down to the parson with the Iron Cross from 1914–18.’

  ‘Isn’t it funny,’ interrupted The Old Un, ‘how so many unemployed officers chose to become parsons. How was that?’

  ‘That’s obvious,’ answered Porta. ‘To be an officer in peacetime is just child’s play for people who can’t be bothered to work. When these boys become unemployed they look for something that compares favourably with the lazy officer-life. And what does? A parson’s life, dear friends. Nowhere else can a man nurse his laziness so well and also camouflage his stupidity. Another thing too: remember how simple souls look up to the cloth. On top of that the devil-dodgers are able to tell people off from the pulpit without anybody answering back – it reminds them of barracks tyranny.’

  Peters went on with his tragic tale:

  ‘Little by little the cat was let out of the bag. They charged me with indecently assaulting my daughter. She had died three months earlier of diphtheria. Well, you know the form. Four days in the cellar and I confessed. Signed on the dotted line that I had not been a victim of pressure and that my treatment had been correct. The court proceedings lasted ten minutes. They were busy. Seven were condemned to death that morning. I got five years. “Small sentence, almost laughable,” said a habitual criminal, who got twenty. Do you know Moabitt? No? Boye, the head warder, was a genius when it came to keeping us in form. He could scare your pants off when he came tripping on his rubber-soles to look through the glass panel in the cell door. He could open cell doors like a world champion. The large keys were fitted in the lock like a flash. You heard a click and the door jerked open with a bang. You saw a row of shiny buttons on a navy-blue uniform. Beneath a large cap you saw a small, evil face. God help you if you didn’t spring to attention the second he appeared. He loved to stamp on people’s toes.

  ‘Unfortunately for me, one day he found a piece of pencil-lead outside my window. God only knows how. I had thrown it out. Luckily they didn’t find the illegal letter I had written. We called him X-ray eyes. It suited him. That lot cost me twenty whip-lashes with the cowtail. And yet Moabitt was a holiday-camp compared with Schernberg.’

  Peters looked at us, lit his pipe and shrugged his shoulders:

  ‘It’s not necessary to go into details. You know about Torgau, Lengries, Dachau, Gross Rosen and all the other concentration camps. In Schernberg they tied us to the radiators until our backs were roasted. Then we were turned about. Seventy-five strokes with the cow-tail wasn’t unusual.

  ‘They were past-masters in varying the executions. We often heard the knife of the guillotine whistle down. And once the hangman’s rope broke so many times that in the end they forced a prisoner to poleaxe the condemned man in the forehead like a butcher slaughtering a calf. We even had a warder who executed people with an old knight’s sword. That was forbidden by the commandant. But he put a “traitor” in an acid-bath with only his head showing over the acid.’

  Porta glanced at our SS man.

  ‘What do you have to say to that, brother?’

  ‘They ought to be put on the rack,’ whispered the SS man. ‘It’s unbelievable, but don’t misunderstand me. I believe every word. And I swear I don’t believe in Adolf and his gang any longer. Show me one of his chums and I’ll bring you his head.’

  Porta grinned and nodded vigorously.

  ‘I’ll come back to that. Maybe you’ll be allowed to hunt with Joseph Porta one fine day. Keep your ears cocked for the hunting-horn.’

  ‘One day I was fetched to the doctor,’ Pete
rs went on. ‘He sterilized me. I came under Paragraph 175, you see. Some months later I was in the penal training-battalion. What happened there you all know, and now I’m one of you. I feel at home here. For the first time for ages I am relaxed. And I don’t wish to return home!’ Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘If my courage fails me, you’ll have to put up with me. It isn’t death I fear, but another go of prison, either in Germany or with the colleagues on the other side.’

  ‘You’re not going to die in Russia. You’re coming home with us to make the revolution,’ decided Porta and patted Peters’s shoulder.

  ‘Well, well,’ said The Old Un. ‘There’s many an account to settle. The only desperate thing is, nobody will believe a word we tell ’em. I’d like to meet anybody who’ll believe the truth about our nice well-oiled Kriegswehrmacht-Haft and Untersuchung institutions. They’d only shake their heads and tell you the stuff you’ve just been telling us didn’t happen; that you’ve been beaten up, yes, but that you didn’t die of that. You really expect to be allowed to take revenge? Then you’re unbelievably naïve!’

  ‘You mean we’ll never be allowed to speak out when the war’s over?’ asked Porta.

  ‘No, by God. I’m sure of that,’ said The Old Un with conviction.

  ‘Well then, from now on I know my damned duty,’ said Porta. ‘Every party-member or SS madman will be laid horizontal if he crosses my path.’

  He lifted up his sniper’s rifle and opened and shut the bolt with threatening bangs.

  ‘Nonsense,’ sneered The Old Un. ‘You’ll be easy. You don’t want to go to Torgau?’

  ‘You evidently don’t know Joseph Porta, Corporal by the grace of God. But you’ll eat your words when the hunter’s call sounds.’ He started whistling:

  ‘Ein Jäger aus Kurpfalz, der reitet durch den grünen Wald.’

  The Old Un shook his head.

  ‘You’re crazy. If you don’t want to listen to me at least keep quiet!’

  ‘I don’t want to do either, old wet-pants,’ grinned Porta.

  From time to time several of us had jumped up on the parapet. We were sitting with our backs to the enemy. They were behaving in the same unconcerned manner.